SOME FUNDAMENTAL 

EDUCATION 





MAXIMILIAN P. E. GROSZMANN 




Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Some Fundamental 
Verities in Education 

BY 

MAXIMILIAN Pi E. GROSZMANN, Pd. D. 

Auttior of •■ The Career of the Child " 

With a Symposium Preface by Frederick E. Bolton, 
W. Grant Chambers, A. B. Poland, H. H. Home 

ILLUSTRATED 




iJSKTlet 



RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 
BOSTON 



Copyright, 1911, by Richard G. Badger 



All Rights Reserved 



- 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



%\x<ft> 



©CI. A 3 033 13 



SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION 

I 

FREDERICK E. BOLTON. . . .Page III 

II 

W. G. CHAMBERS p age VII 

III 

A. B. POLAND p age X 

IV 
H. H. HORNE Page XV 



INTRODUCTION 

I 

The principles enunciated by Dr. Grosz- 
mann in this booklet were daring prophecies 
a score of years ago. When the author first 
wrought out and tested experimentally the 
ideas therein expressed there were many, as 
the present writer well remembers, who con- 
sidered such doctrines as "fads." But Dr. 
Groszmann and others saw clearly, tested 
courageously, and demonstrated beyond ca- 
vil that the "new fangled notions" and 
"fads" were indeed fundamental verities in 
educational procedure. 

No one has demonstrated more thoroughly 
than Dr. Groszmann that the processes of 
education can not be wisely administered by 
those who possess only knowledge of the 
subject matter and "common sense." Edu- 
cation is a science as well as an art and the 
educator must have scientific knowledge of 
the growth and unfoldment of the powers of 
the being to be educated. 

The great topic of the day is "conserva- 
tion," but only the prophetic yet understand 
that the supreme problem of conservation is 
iii 



INTRODUCTION 

the conservation of human mentality. This 
must be accomplished by prevision in de- 
tecting the moments of germination of the 
unfolding possibilities of the awakening be- 
ing. Dr. Groszmann long ago foresaw that 
education is a problem in psychogenetic sci- 
ence. The various examples which he has 
used to illustrate his principles, especially 
those drawn from the realms of motor ac- 
tivities and artistic impulses, all show the 
fact of nascent periods in development. Un- 
mindful, however, of these inexorable laws 
of growth, many a course of study ignores 
the true order of development and pre- 
scribes abstract studies at a time when motor 
activities predominate and place the simple, 
concrete and motor activities at a time when 
the mind should have become capable of sus- 
tained abstract thinking. How long shall we 
be obliged to witness the spectacle of boys 
and girls prattling the dry forms of abstract 
grammar and arithmetic at a time when they 
would so delight in making things, drawing, 
and painting, learning the elements of sci- 
ence, becoming masters in speaking foreign 
languages, etc.? Later, in college, about 
half of their time is occupied with learn- 
ing details which could have been more 
iv 



INTRODUCTION 

easily and certainly mastered a decade be- 
fore. A recognition of the fundamental 
verities in education suggested by the au- 
thor would make impossible such atrocities 
committed in the name of education. 

No truth is expressed better by the author 
than the important idea that education is 
not a process of filling minds, but rather a 
matter of stimulating to natural expression. 
Happily we are coming to recognize inter- 
est as a means, and expression as an end of 
all true education. The individual develops 
only through expression and he is stimulated 
to expression only by becoming genuinely in- 
terested. Interests are also coming to be 
recognized as direct functions of instincts 
and stages of development. 

As Dr. Groszmann indicates, the ideas ex- 
pressed in this book are no longer new ideas. 
Happily, through the heroic and far-sighted 
work of the author and others who have in- 
dependent ideas and the courage to advance 
them, educational practice in the better 
schools is coming to be well in line with the 
principles maintained. But even now the 
general public, the parents of the children 
to be educated in our schools, have a very 
vague idea of the significance of these prin- 
v 



INTRODUCTION 

ciples which are revolutionizing our pro- 
cesses of teaching and education, and which 
are in strong contrast to the traditional 
school courses. 

It is hoped that this little book, though 
tardy in appearing, may serve as a guide to 
many who still seek light and may give cour- 
age to many others who understand but who 
lack the courage of their convictions. 
Frederick E. Bolton, 

School of Education, 
The State University of Iowa, 

Iowa City, la. 



VI 



II 



The time is past when a justification of 
constructive and artistic activities in educa- 
tion is demanded by leaders in educational 
thought. However, the frequent outbursts 
in the public press against the fads and frills 
of the modern school suggest that the lay 
mind is not yet at rest in this matter. 

Dr. Groszmann's little book, which I have 
read with much pleasure, and which is, in a 
sense, an elaboration of certain points pre- 
sented in his earlier book on "The Career 
of the Child", presents in simple form, with 
numerous illustrations, the chief justification 
for art and industry in education. Dr. 
Groszmann's long experience both as an ad- 
ministrator in well known schools and as a 
student of the life of exceptional children, 
makes his judgment as to the function of ac- 
tivity, construction, and art creation, as 
these processes affect the normal develop- 
ment of the mind, especially valuable. 

Perhaps the most interesting, certainly 
the most original, feature of the book is the 
development of the conception of the "cul- 
ture epochs" in the sphere of art. The au- 
thor has worked out quite a convincing argu- 
vii 



INTRODUCTION 

ment in two parallel series of illustrations, 
one set selected from the work of children, 
the other from survivals of primitive art. 
This demonstration supplements nicely, on 
the side of expression, the older form of the 
theory of "culture epochs'' which emphasized 
chiefly the child's interests. The experi- 
ment from which Dr. Groszmann's theory 
emerged was worked out many years ago 
in the Ethical Culture Schools, then under 
his direction. 

The complete education in our day in- 
cludes more than preparation for industrial 
success— more than conventional knowledge 
—more than social efficiency. It must in- 
clude an appreciation of the goodness and 
beauty in the world in which the individual 
is to live. Mental sanity depends no less on 
the processes of construction, representation, 
and appreciation, than it has long been 
known to depend on normal perception, 
judgment, analysis, and all the rest. The 
suggestion herein developed that these ex- 
pressive activities develop in an order de- 
termined by racial evolution, along with their 
underlying interests, while not wholly 
unique, is very cleverly and clearly illus- 
trated. It is no mere figure of speech to 
viii 



INTRODUCTION 

speak of the principles brought out in this 
little book as "Some Fundamental Verities 
in Education". 

W. G. Chambers, 
School of Education, 
University of Pittsburg, Pittsburg, Pa. 



IX 



Ill 



Progress in elementary school education, 
during the last twenty-five years in the United 
States, has been rapid. Aims have broad- 
ened, method less often consists in memor- 
izing facts from a text book, and results in 
general show that the average grammar 
school graduate of to-day has acquired in 
school a better knowledge of the 3 R's than 
did his predecessor of a generation ago. 
Moreover, the grammar school graduate of 
to-day has learned in school to do a great 
many useful things such as drawing, manual 
training, sewing, cooking and the like. But 
despite all this there exists, as always hereto- 
fore, a widespread dissatisfaction with the 
results achieved. Investigations such as that 
recently had in Baltimore and such as that 
now being conducted in New York City, bear 
witness to the unrest and dissatisfaction of 
the public at large. 

For twenty-five years or longer there has 
been developing gradually a public self- 
consciousness of the insufficiency of former 
aims in education to meet modern social and 
industrial needs. With the increasing wealth 
of the country the disposition to realize new- 



INTRODUCTION 

cr aims has grown pari passu, until wc now 
find the public mind altogether unsettled and 
at times reactionary. 

The chief cause alleged for present dissat- 
isfaction with the schools is the congested 
course of study which by natural implication 
leads to the conviction that essentials are be- 
ing neglected; second to this is the rapidly 
growing cost of school maintenance. To de- 
fend the latter by comparison with the in- 
creased cost of living is useless; the public 
might perhaps be satisfied if they were get- 
ting what they demand, namely, a more per- 
fect knowledge of, and skill in, the 3 R's. 
To convince the public that these studies are 
being taught much better than they were a 
generation ago before the newer studies had 
been introduced, seems to be futile. The 
public will not believe it, for the time given, 
it is said, is inadequate ; moreover, the facts, 
it is alleged, do not warrant it. 

If attention is called to such comparative 
tests as have been made in Norwich (Conn.), 
Springfield (Mass.), and Cleveland (Ohio), 
showing as they do in each instance that bet- 
ter results are being obtained in the 3 R's 
than formerly, the public is still unconvinced. 

Occasionally educators themselves, by 
xi 



INTRODUCTION 

their public confessions, add fuel to the 
flames of popular dissatisfaction. Thus the 
National Education Association at its Cleve- 
land meeting, in the year 1908, adopted in 
its declaration of principles a resolution to 
the effect that "diversified and overburdened 
courses of study in the grades" should be 
subordinated to a "thorough drill in the es- 
sential subjects." 

It is unfortunate, indeed, that we have no 
adequate standards by which to measure the 
products, and hence the progress, of edu- 
cation. True, for some time back, the Na- 
tional Bureau of Education, the Russell 
Sage Foundation and other independent 
agencies have attempted, with greater or 
less success, to determine the relative effi- 
ciency of schools and school systems in the 
cities of the United States. The methods 
pursued, however, have been solely quanti- 
tative. Facts concerning the number of pu- 
pils who leave school before completing the 
prescribed course of study, facts concerning 
the number of pupils who repeat the work of 
the several grades, and figures to show the 
probable additional cost entailed by such 
repeating, are all quantitative and discover 
little pr nothing of the qualitative, or real, 
xii 



INTRODUCTION 

aspects of education. Information of the 
latter kind can be ascertained only by an en- 
tirely different method, namely, that of ex- 
amining pupils as to their actual proficiency 
in the studies taught and in their capacity to 
do things. Until, in fact, such tests have 
been applied, it will be impossible to show 
statistically the measure of progress made 
by the schools, great as we ourselves believe 
it, and personally know it, to have been. 
Meanwhile, the broader aims and better 
methods advocated by Dr. Groszmann have 
helped the situation immeasurably. 

As an illustration of the reactionary ten- 
dency, the last session of the Legislature of 
the State of New Jersey amended its school 
laws, by enacting a provision requiring a 
uniform State examination in order to grad- 
uate pupils from a grammar school into a 
high school. The examination extends to 
the 3 R's only, including geography and his- 
tory of the United States. 

The practical results of such legislation, 
if allowed to remain on the statute books, 
can not be other than to set back the wheels 
of progress a generation at least. It will 
cause, necessarily, undue emphasis to be laid 
on the purely formal, or examinable, as- 
xiii 



INTRODUCTION 

pects of the common school branches ; it will 
cause most teachers to ignore to a very large 
extent the real elements of knowledge in 
which, rather than the formal, educators of 
late have been more deeply concerned. The 
raison d'etre for such reactionary legislation 
is to be found in (a) inability to appreciate 
the fundamental conceptions of what is 
needed in an industrial democracy, (b) over- 
appreciation of the utility of an elementary 
school curriculum in which undue emphasis 
is placed, as in this case, on the 3 R's. It is 
the purpose, I take it, of Dr. Groszmann in 
bringing out this last monograph to combat, 
so far as possible, this reactionary tendency. 
The writer takes pleasure in being able 
to recall vividly the utterances of Dr. 
Groszmann made in the early 90's along 
these lines. These early utterances were re- 
garded by many of the best educators in 
New York and vicinity, who were fortunate 
enough to hear them, as doubtless sound in 
theory but too visionary and remote to be 
put into immediate practice. Indeed, the 
looked upon at that date as being an educa- 
looked upon at that date, as being an educa- 
tional experiment of very doubtful value. 
But times have changed and a better phil- 
xiv 



INTRODUCTION 

osophy now prevails. That Dr. Grosz- 
mann's views have been so generally ac- 
cepted among the educators in all parts of 
the country must be to him a matter of great 
personal, as well as professional gratifica- 
tion. 

I consider "The Career of the Child" and 
its companion book "Some Fundamental 
Verities in Education" as valuable and time- 
ly contributions. They can not fail to be 
gratefully received by the public, lay as well 
as professional, and will be likely to exert a 
favorable influence upon the reactionary ten- 
dencies to which allusion has been made. 
A. B. Poland, 
Superintendent of Schools, 

Newark, N. J. 



xv 



IV 



A Brief Notice of the History and Phil- 
osophy of the Motor Element in Education. 

The demand of this book is that the mo- 
tor element in training be made fundamen- 
tal, consequently that the sensory element be 
made secondary. The motor element in 
general represents the educative influence of 
action; in this book it is represented by the 
two activities of manual training and art. 
The sensory element in general represents 
the educative influence of thought, especially 
through the use of books. 

Historically the sensory element has been 
primary in education and the motor element 
secondary. The Greeks regarded labor as 
menial, though they excelled in the artistic 
self-expression which slave labor made pos- 
sible. The Romans were not above work 
but they lacked in artistic self-expression. 
Thus each of the classical nations lacked one 
of two elements in motor training herein dis- 
cussed. Among the Greeks the life of 
thought dominated the life of action; among 
the Romans the life of action dominated the 
life of thought, and their schools, which 
xvi 



INTRODUCTION 

produced the orators of Rome, reflected this 
fact. 

The mediaeval curriculum aimed to disci- 
pline mind and body rather than to develop 
them. Labor was regarded as a necessity, 
not as an education; it consumed time that 
otherwise might be misspent in idleness. 
The sensory element of impression domin- 
ated the motor element of expression. 

The Renaissance revived the intellectual- 
ism of Greece, and the whole modern cur- 
riculum until twenty-five years ago has been 
dominantly a matter of knowledge rather 
than one of efficiency. Luther demanded 
handwork to accompany headwork without 
fully appreciating the educational significance 
of his demand. Pestalozzi in his long life of 
educational experimentation began to catch 
glimmers of the educative value of hand- 
work. Froebel first grasped the full educa- 
tional significance of occupations and crea- 
tive self-expression. Though the past twen- 
ty-five years have seen the general recogni- 
tion on. the part of leaders of educational 
thought and of the most advanced school 
systems of the truths behind the demand for 
motor training, on the practical side the rev- 
olution of the curriculum remains yet to be 
xvii 



INTRODUCTION 

effected. This text is another voice calling 
for the revolution. 

On the philosophical side the demand for 
motor in distinction from sensory training 
means an emphasis on the will in distinc- 
tion from the intellect. The conflict between 
the claims of will and intellect is indicated by 
the terms voluntarism versus intellectualism. 
To the voluntarist the will is the essential 
characteristic of man, to the intellectualist 
man is essentially a thinking, not an active, 
being. In educational philosophy Herbart 
made the pendulum swing in the direction of 
intellectualism, and our modern school meth- 
ods have mainly followed him. 

But the rise of the biological sciences in 
the latter half of the nineteenth century have 
stressed the deep place of instincts in life, 
especially in the lives of children. Reason 
appears to have the practical function of 
guiding action instead of the intellectual 
function of pure thought. Schopenhauer has 
especially represented the primary place of 
will and the secondary place of intellect. In 
educational philosophy Froebel again has 
represented the active side of our natures. 
The remarkable pragmatic philosophy of 
our own day is again a variant form of vol- 
xviii 



INTRODUCTION 

untarism. The educational philosophy of 
the next generation is likely to be voluntaris- 
tic rather than intellectualistic. And, by im- 
plication, it is the voluntaristic philosophy 
that underlies the demands of this book. 

In sum, the history and philosophy of edu- 
cation are ready for the next step forward, 
viz., the substitution of the motor for the 
sensory element as fundamental in training. 
H. H. Horne, 
School of Pedagogy, 
New York University. 



xix 



FOREWORD 

THIS small volume is a companion 
to my book, "The Career of the 
Child from the Kindergarten to 
the High School," which has just 
appeared. It emphasizes some of the argu- 
ments presented there, and endeavors to 
prove the fundamental value, in edu- 
cation, of the native instincts and ten- 
dencies of the child. While laying 
particular stress upon the manual and 
creative side of educational method, and 
thus connecting more particularly with chap- 
ters VI (The Manual Principle) and VII 
(Kinds of Manual Expression) of the other 
book, the present argument goes to the main 
springs of child activity and interest, and 
proposes to base educational science upon a 
foundation of psychogenetic understanding 
of the child soul, which in turn must find one 
of its sources in an appreciation of those phy- 
logenetic facts which are so often overlooked 
in the discussion of educational problems. 

This volume also adds an experimental 
justification to the theory of developmental 
periods, or culture epochs, of the child as 
offered in Chapter v of "The Career of the 



FOREWORD 

Child" which treats of a rational course of 
study. The experiments made in the "Ethi- 
cal Culture School' ' of New York were later 
repeated in various forms by the author in 
other schools of this country, notably the 
schools of Menomonee, Wisconsin; and 
everywhere the same conditions were found 
to be existing, thus further corroborating the 
theory advanced. As it is easy to make simi- 
lar tests anywhere, following the same sug- 
gestions, anyone may convince himself of the 
truth or error of my contentions. Experi- 
mental work of this kind, in other words the 
method of the pedagogical laboratory, will 
elucidate other disputed problems of child 
development and child psychology, and we 
may look forward to the time when peda- 
gogy will in reality be an exact science. 

The experiments related in this volume 
were made over a decade and a half ago. 
And the manuscripts of my book on "The 
Career of the Child" as well as of the pres- 
ent one were written ten years ago. Some of 
the chapters have since appeared in the form 
of articles in various magazines; and all of 
them were at some time or other made pub- 
lic in the form of lectures. But while the 
original manuscripts were of course revised 
before they were presented for publication 



FOREWORD 

in book form, little or nothing of the original 
argument appeared to need change, and very 
little new material had to be added. Altho 
it is but natural that the educational world 
has been moving ahead since the idea of these 
books was first conceived, it will be found 
that the educational philosophy here ex- 
pressed is still distinctly modern. This book 
may at least serve, on the one hand, as a 
resume of previous efforts to formulate edu- 
cational principles; and on the other, as a 
starting point for further discussions. 

Maximilian P. E. Groszmann, 
"Watchung Crest", 

Plainfield, N. J., October, 191 1. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction ........ ... .,. ., iii 

Foreword . ., 5 

PART ONE 

Manual Culture and Sense Training 

i —Knowledge Never Learnt of Schools 19 

2— Motor and Sense Training 24 

3— The Lesson of the Centipede. .... 38 

4— Experience vs. Book Learning. ... 42 

5— The Philosophy of the Tool 46 

6— Not a New Branch, but a Method. 50 

PART TWO 

Art Culture and Art Expression 

1— The Esthetic Attitude 59 

2— Expression Thru Art 62 

3— An Experiment, and Conclusions 

Therefrom . 78 

4— Interpretation and Symbolism in Art 

Expression 86 

5— Artistic Culture Epochs 93 

6 — Suggestions as to a Course in Art 

Training , ... 108 

Conclusion . . ., 116 

9 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure 

i & 2 — Moqui Canteen, New Mexico 

3 & 4 — Clay Figures 

5-7 — Clay Figures 

8 & 9 — Free Hand Cuttings, Grade ill 

10 — Crayon Drawing, Grade Hi 

11-13 — Crayon Drawings, Grade iv 

14-17 — Crayon Drawings, Grade iv 

18 — Crayon Drawing, Grade v 

19 — Crayon Drawing, Grade vi 

20 — Crayon Drawing, Grade vn 

21 — Crayon Drawing, Grade vm 

22 — Egyptian Drawing — A Pond with Palms 

23 — Child's Drawing — A Pond with Trees 

24 — Shaman's Lodge (Alaska) 

25 — Child's Drawing — A Pond with Trees 

26 — Ojibwa Medicine Lodge 

27 — Child's Drawing — A Pond with Trees 

28 — Egyptian Drawing — the Brickmakers 

29 — Egyptian Drawing — the Coffinmakers 

30 — Child's Drawing 

II 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure 

31 a & b — Shoemaker and Portrait 

31 c — Still Life Drawing 

32 — Clay Modeling 

33-35 — Colored Drawings of Indian Vase 

36 — Priam's Visit to Tent of Achilles 

37 — A Winter Scene 

38— Clay Modeling 



12 



SOME FUNDAMENTAL VERITIES 
IN EDUCATION 

THE education of our children, in 
the schools and in the homes, has 
in a large measure been dictated 
by the prevailing fashion of 
thought. The result has not always been to 
the satisfaction of those who made it their 
business to adjust the natural child to these 
varying fashions. Fashion is no respecter of 
healthy bodies; it twists and distorts them 
into artificial shapes, and ruins their health. 
Thus, educational fashions are apt to distort 
and destroy a child's natural instincts and 
produce artificial minds and misfits. 

Endeavoring to make the children con- 
form to preconceived ideas as to what they 
ought to be, we have often forever spoiled 
their best talents. They were hedged in by 
so many OUGHTS, and trimmed off here 
and there to make them suit the artificial pat- 
tern that their natural growth became seri- 
ously interfered with. We insisted that 
they ought to act in certain ways, that they 
ought to feel fine things such as adults 
thought were right, and noble, and sublime. 
But we failed to inquire into what the children 
really did think or feel, or whether they were 

13 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

at all capable of feeling, thinking, and act- 
ing as we expected them to do. 

Unfortunately, it is quite easy to make 
young children conform outwardly to our 
rules, accept our standards in a conventional 
way, and follow blindly our suggestions. But 
the final outcome is not seldom in the nature 
of an appalling surprise to parents and 
teachers. And then there are lamentations 
and astonishment: Had we not done all we 
could for the boy who turns out to be way- 
ward? Had we not given him the very best 
education possible? Probably, we had not. 
The real nature of the child had remained 
an unknown quantity to us which we really 
had not cared to discover. What we had 
been educating was a shadow— the real 
self of the child, perchance, we did not 
touch. While we were trying to mold 
the child after the best approved pat- 
tern, there were underground forces at work 
which slowly gathered strength, often from 
the very repression, and finally blew up our 
artificial structure from within, leaving ruin, 
and desolation, and wailing. 

The new message is: Let us first under- 
stand what the child does feel, not what he 
ought to feel; what he can do, not what we 
would like him to do; and then we may ex- 
14 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

pect to be able to make him a man in the 
service of the highest ideals of the race, one 
who is first of all himself, and true to him- 
self, not a copy of somebody else, not mere- 
ly an "average" man, after the common 
fashion: but an individuality, free, strong, 
aspiring to the noblest. 

Our traditional education, with all its 
modern embellishments, is still only too deep- 
ly concerned in repressing the natural in- 
stincts of children. We force them to give 
up their paradise of dreams, fancies and 
play-activities, their glee and noise, and tie 
them down, at a tender age, to school 
benches and desks, and slates and books, 
torturing their immature brains into dull- 
ness. We rejoice when our artificial drill 
succeeds in making them precocious, and im- 
itators of adult ways, not imagining that we 
have perhaps killed the divine germ of spon- 
taneity and individuality in its very infancy. 
We praise the quiet, sedate, blase child who 
does not disturb the class room discipline as 
a laudable product of successful education, 
and wreak vengeance on the sinner who bus- 
tles about in unrestrainable boisterousness. 
And we ignore the fact that health means 
vigor, noise, activity with a child; that real, 

15 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

wholesome self-control can only come with 
maturity, and that the quiet child is generally 
an abnormal child, physically, mentally, or 
morally. 

True, intellectual work, as ordinarily un- 
derstood, is a form of activity very welcome 
to most children at certain stages of their 
growth, and becoming more and more en- 
joyed by them as their minds mature. But 
at no stage, during the age of childhood, can 
it form the exclusive occupation, or the prin- 
cipal, or most normal, form of the children's 
activity. Even the most studious child, if 
in the enjoyment of normal health, will get 
weary of continuous poring over books, of 
memorizing, writing, and figuring, in school 
and in the dreary hours of home work 
which curtails his rest and play; and in cer- 
tain periods, a fit of aversion to study will 
take hold of every one. These symptoms of 
a rather healthy development we are only 
too apt to denounce as due to moral perver- 
sion, laziness, naughtiness, and what not. 
There would be fewer breakdowns, less of 
nervous debility and irritable temper, less in- 
efficiency and failure in after-life, if childhood 
were given its native rights, if the needs of 
children were better understood. 
16 



PART I. MANUAL CULTURE AND 
SENSE TRAINING 



Knowledge Never Learnt of Schools 

ONE of the foremost characteris- 
tics of healthy child life is the 
play instinct of children. A play- 
ing child is a happy child; a child 
that plays with absorbing interest is normal 
and in satisfactory condition. Loss of the 
play interest is a danger signal. What is 
presented in play form is eagerly taken up 
and commands supreme interest. The play- 
ing child exercises all his powers — never gets 
tired until physically exhausted; he is inven- 
tive, original, wonderful. The playing child 
lives in a world by himself, glorious, full of 
beauty, rich in possibilities; nothing is im- 
possible. Thru play mainly is it that the 
true natural instincts of the child manifest 
themselves, and a wealth of experience, and 
the power to do, are acquired. 

It is a common experience among princi- 
pals of schools that parents are very anxious 
to have their children leave the kindergarten 
and be advanced to the school classes proper 
at as early an age as possible so that they 
might begin to "learn" something. Learn 
—what? Some figuring on slate and black- 
board, some drawing of clumsy letters, some 
19 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

so-called reading, stutteringly performed, of 
brilliant thoughts such as : "I see a cat. 
The cat can run." Is that learning? True, 
it leads up towards an avenue of learning 
which is more or less useful to all, and par- 
ticularly so to some who are gifted in that 
direction. But there is a wealth of experi- 
ence and education to be gathered outside 
of this narrow path of ordinary school in- 
struction. Indeed, it has been urged, on the 
ground of a more accurate knowledge of the 
child's stages of mental and physiological 
development, that these formal branches 
should properly be postponed to a later per- 
iod. The child is learning vastly more than 
the superannuated believer in the gospel of 
the three R's has begun to imagine, by 
using his eyes and ears and hands for 
a boundless variety of activities other 
than counting up two and three is five, 
or reading, "My cat sees a mouse", or 
awkwardly flourishing a capital C. A 
sorry child that knows and learns no 
more than that. As Professor Preyer has 
said: "A child in the first three or four 
years of his life learns as much as the stu- 
dent in his entire university course." Well 
may Whittier's "Barefoot Boy" be quoted 
20 



Knowledge Never Learnt of Schools 

who gains — 

"Knowledge never learnt of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell; 
And the groundmole sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
Where the woodgrape's clusters shine; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way,— 
Mason of his walls of clay, — 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans! 
For, eschewing books and tasks, 
Nature answers all he asks; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — 
Blessings on the barefoot boy! 
****** 

He learns all this multitude of lessons 
21 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

practically without a teacher, unless it were 
his father or mother teaching him a commun- 
ity with nature on those precious walks into 
the open which now-a-days, alas ! are becom- 
ing a thing of the past,— the bustle and noise 
of the big cities swallowing up all this sweet- 
ness of bygone times. He learns them quite 
spontaneously and joyously, thru his play, 
thru his natural activity which develops his 
muscles, his nerves, his senses, his brain. 
And he learns them so easily because they are 
a matter of supreme interest to him, not 
made a sorry task by a grumbling, critical 
schoolmaster. To tell the truth, I have little 
faith in the old Puritanical idea that there 
is virtue in drudgery, and that we can 
strengthen our moral nature materially by 
doing what is distasteful to us. We shall do 
our best only when our whole soul is in the 
work; and that can only be when we are 
supremely interested, when a motive behind 
the act spurs us on, when we can be our- 
selves in expression and activity. 

Play is the child's work. What is the dif- 
ference between play and work as the latter 
is ordinarily conceived? "Compel a boy to 
continue quietly his game of marbles after 
an alarm of fire has sounded in his neighbor- 
22 



Knowledge Never Learnt of Schools 

hood, and play has changed to labor." 
(Johnson). 

It may be claimed, by way of a broad 
statement, that all that is great in the world 
has been done not by labor that was drudg- 
ery, but by efforts which correspond to the 
play instinct, that is to say such as were made 
spontaneously, out of the fulness of the 
heart, as an outcome of natural instincts, 
powers, or talents. Man is wholly man, 
says Schiller, only when he plays. 

And what a world of information, inspir- 
ation, and training is there thru play! Yoder, 
in an older study (Pedagogical Seminary in) 
says: "In the making of mud pies and doll 
dresses, sandpile farms and miniature roads, 
tiny dams, and water wheels, whittled out 
boats, sleds, dog harnesses, and a thousand 
and one other things, the child receives an ac- 
cumulation of facts, a skill of hands, a true- 
ness of eye, a power of attention and quick- 
ness of perception; and in flying kite, catch- 
ing trout, in pressing leaves and gathering 
stones, in collecting stamps, and eggs, and 
butterflies, a culture also, seldom appre- 
ciated by the parent and teacher." 



23 



II 



Motor and Sense Training 

Do not repress the play instinct in the 
child, but recognize it in his school work! 
What is called manual training is but one 
form of this recognition. It means culture 
thru manual training, thru sense training, 
thru the play instinct. For true manual cul- 
ture in the elementary school is directed 
play, as are the kindergarten occupations 
and games. Directed: — not in the sense of 
crushing out the child's spontaneity and in- 
ventiveness, but of following Nature's lead 
by providing for the child, in a more or less 
systematic and organized way, what he 
craves for, and what will respond to his in- 
nermost needs. 

Manual training is in reality sense train- 
ing. The senses are the gates thru which 
the knowledge of the world around us comes 
to us; but the gates only. The mind receives 
messages from the senses in the brain. 
There it is where impressions take place, 
where concepts are formed. We do not see 
with our eyes, but with the brain; we do not 
feel with our hands, but with our brain. 
Light, sound, hardness, etc., exist not in 
reality, but are the forms under which the 

24 



Motor and Sense Training 

brain perceives the world and its messages. 
Cut the nerve that connects the eye with the 
centre of vision in the brain — ever so per- 
fect and unimpaired as the eye may remain, 
there will be no perception of light. On the 
other hand, we have learnt very gradually 
to understand the meaning of the messages 
which the natural forces are sending con- 
stantly thru the senses; learning to locate 
and interpret the causes of sensation, is a 
laborious task. Thus, sense training is brain 
training; thru sense training, we are enabled 
to have clearer and more accurate percep- 
tions and concepts. 

The new-born babe has not this know- 
ledge; yet few of us can fully appreciate 
that the conceptions which constitute the 
adult's knowledge of the world, and which 
seem so simple and self-evident, were of 
such slow growth. A few illustrations may 
serve to emphasize the character of this 
conceptual development. 

If we move a pencil point along the 
groove between two fingers so that it touches 
both at the same time, we are distinctly 
aware of the presence of only one point, 
even tho we close our eyes. But not so when 
we cross the fingers over. If we now touch 
25 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

them with the pencil, we feel two points, 
and even the assistance of vision which in- 
forms us that there is but one, will not dis- 
pel the illusion. What is the cause of this 
peculiar phenomenon? Experience has 
taught us that one and the same point can 
touch two adjacent fingers in normal posi- 
tion, but that the two remote sides of these 
same fingers cannot be reached by less than 
two points at a time. Crossing the fingers 
is uncommon because unnecessary for ordin- 
ary functions; and consequently there is no 
experience recorded in the brain of single 
points touching them in this position. We 
have learned to interpret sensations report- 
ed from the adjacent sides of two fingers as 
coming from one object, and those reported 
from the remote sides as coming from more 
than one. This interpretation has become 
automatic and instantaneous, and can now no 
longer be corrected by the messages sent 
from other senses. 

Another experiment has been described in 
various forms by different psychologists. If 
we lift up with our hands two bodies which 
are equal in weight, but different in size, the 
material being apparently the same, the 
smaller one feels distinctly the heavier. This 
26 



Motor and Sense Training 

illusion lasts even after we have convinced 
our intellect, by actual weighing, that the 
two bodies are equipollent. In an experi- 
ment with a series of eight such weights, even 
persons who were well used to discriminate 
between small weights, were carried away 
by the illusion, and gave widely different an- 
swers as to the comparative weights of the 
objects. Some thought they discovered just 
"a trifling difference"; others estimated the 
smallest weight to be as much as eight times 
as heavy as the largest! 

The explanation is again that we have be- 
come accustomed to an interpretation of the 
messages which we receive, this time by the 
muscular sense, as in the first experiment it 
was the sense of touch, so that it corresponds 
to our ordinary and oft repeated experi- 
ence. The larger a body, the heavier it usu- 
ally is, especially when compared with other 
bodies made of the same material. Auto- 
matically, then, we will expend a greater 
muscular effort in lifting the larger body 
than in moving, or weighing, the smaller; 
experiencing then less resistance from the 
larger body than we expect, the illusion of 
its being lighter will be produced. For we 
measure weight by the resistance a body of- 
27 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

fers to our muscular effort in lifting. The 
motor response to the sensory impression, 
as mediated by the sense of sight in this in- 
stance, is practically reflex and unescapable. 
It is noteworthy, however, to remember that 
the illusion fails in the case of children 
younger than six, and of imbeciles. Young 
children lack the association of sensations 
and ideas which characterizes true concep- 
tion; the individual senses develop independ- 
ently of each other, each producing a separ- 
ate set of impressions which by numberless 
repetitions under varying conditions become 
gradually related and co-ordinated. In im- 
beciles, there is a general weakness of as- 
sociative power, and their sensations remain 
essentially unrelated. The illusions here de- 
scribed are impossible without a correlation 
of sense-experiences; therefore, they are 
possible only in those who have reached the 
associative stage. 

They are illusions of sensation only, and 
of what may be called automatic judgment. 
They can be corrected, as far as abstract 
knowledge is concerned, by other sense tests. 
But to make these corrective tests, requires 
not only an extra effort, but presupposes a 
consciousness of the possibility of error. 
28 



Motor and Sense Training 



* 



This consciousness is again the result of ex- 
perience; it cannot be expected to exist in 
the young child, or the untrained mind. As 
we are subject to numberless illusions of sim- 
ilar character, in the entire sphere of sensa- 
tions, the question may arise whether they 
might not be avoided, at least in part, by ap- 
propriate training in early childhood when 
our first concepts are being formed. 

However that may be, this fact will have 
become clear from the foregoing discussion 
that the child learns to interpret the mes- 
sages it receives thru the senses just as the 
telegraph operator learns to interpret the 
meaning of the clicking of his apparatus. 
And so we have come to call the messages 
sent thru the ear, sounds; those sent thru 
the eye, light; those sent thru the sense of 
touch, hardness or softness, etc. ; and then 
there are messages from the other senses, 
those of smell and taste, the muscular sense, 
the temperature sense, and perhaps other 
senses as yet undefined. As a rule, as said be- 
fore, it requires the co-operation of several 
senses to give us the information needed for 
tolerably clear images of external objects. 
While these images may after all be but sym- 
bols of reality they represent the reactions of 
29 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

our mind to external stimuli, and therefore 
answer the purpose of cognition. 

Indeed, we are constantly at work — and 
this is what constitutes our mental activity 
— to correct and clarify our mental images 
and to increase our conceptional possessions : 
an activity which renders our world-idea 
grander, deeper, nobler, hour after hour. 
But there is a limit to this growth. Not 
alone that our senses will never suffice to re- 
veal all the mysteries of nature as thru them 
we can only perceive that fraction of the uni- 
versal forces which finds them ready chan- 
nels, or competent messengers;— but the 
mind has a conventional way of interpreting 
sense messages in the manner they first im- 
pressed it, and which has become fixed and 
automatic, something like a mere reflex ac- 
tivity. Thus, remembering the finger and 
pencil experiment, we shall possibly never be 
able to rid ourselves of the sensation of two 
pencil points when there is only one. And 
then, each nerve can convey messages only 
in its own individual way, that is to say, it 
can only report a shock which it receives and 
which is then interpreted by the mind in an 
habitual, fixed method. Everyone knows 
about the unpleasant experience of ''seeing 
30 



Motor and Sense Training 

stars" when there are none to be seen, and 
which happens when we receive a shock on 
our eye which also affects the optic nerve. 
The explanation of the sensation is that the 
irritation of the optic nerve is reported to 
headquarters and there deciphered in the 
usual way, as coming from the ordinary 
source of optic impressions, viz., rays of 
light. The report could not be deciphered 
or interpreted in any other way. Thus we 
have the illusion of light even when the shock 
was produced by other means, a mechanical 
pressure, or an electric current, or what 
not. 

All this implies that we are apt to misin- 
terpret messages, to be deceived about the 
objects our senses perceive, in more than one 
way. This again suggests that great care 
must be taken so that the earliest impressions 
a child receives be as clear and accurate, and 
mutually supplementary, as the educator's 
forethought can make them, lest the child 
carry thru life a veritable burden of errone- 
ous conceptions and modes of interpretation 
which he can never shake off. The child 
must learn to test his sensations as mediated 
by one sense organ constantly by those of 
the others, in order to arrive at reliable re- 
31 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

suits. His power of observation must be 
stimulated, so that he will learn to know ex- 
actly, to think clearly and independently. 
Here is seen the vast scope of sense training 
without which all formal instruction in read- 
ing, writing, number, in history and geo- 
graphy, in whatever you please, will remain 
empty and meaningless, mere "sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbal." 

Manual training is sense training. It is 
training of the hand, as the word signifies, 
which in itself is a training in muscular adjust- 
ment, or motor training; but also of the hand 
as guided by the eye and inspired and directed 
by the mind. And were it but a training of 
the sense of touch, and of the muscular sense, 
it were much indeed. The sense of touch, 
assisted by the motor sense, is the most an- 
cient and effective of all. The wonderful ac- 
complishments of children born blind and 
deaf and mute, when they were placed under 
careful training, — such as Laura Bridgman 
and Helen Keller— have been made possible 
by the sense of touch. Primitive organisms 
have only this one sense from which all 
other senses have been differentiated. Even 
now, touch stimuli have many powerful ef- 
fects, also in the province of emotional life. 

32 



Motor and Sense Training 

It is thru tactile and muscular tests, in arm 
and hand and leg movements, that we have 
conceptions of space, and of form in space. It 
was once thought that the eye can at least lo- 
cate the direction from which a ray of light 
comes as a messenger of knowledge; but it 
has been shown* that even in this fundamen- 
tal function the sense of touch must in all 
probability come to the aid of the mind. The 
eye perceives nothing but light, or color, or 
their absence, and degree. Light and color 
impressions are quite deceptive and often 
call forth very erroneous notions of an ob- 
ject. The tricks of legerdemain and the ef- 
fect of panoramas and cycloramas were im- 
possible without this fact. The size and 
shape of bodies, the distance of objects, the 
nature and structure of the material com- 
posing them, would remain much more a 
mystery to us than they are, were it not for 
the tactile and muscular sensations. Unless 
we have once handled a ball, or a cube, we 
shall never really know what these things 
mean. The eye mediates to us only two di- 
mensions, on the flat surface. No drawing 
can give the immediate impression of solid- 



*Cf. Am. Journal of Psychology, Oct., 1897, r> 

33 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

ity; not even the cleverest painting in color 
does. True, owing to the convergence of 
the axes of our two eyes, we look somewhat 
around an object and thus get a faint indica- 
tion of solidity; a fact made use of in stereo- 
scopic pictures. But it has also been conclu- 
sively proven that the eye can be deceived in 
spite of this ; that it depends upon touch and 
muscular tests to perfect the idea of three- 
dimensional space. That we now can rec- 
ognize, with the eye alone, an object to be 
solid, is largely due to the fact that we have 
learnt to interpret certain light and color ef- 
fects as indicative of certain conditions of 
size, shape and distance, which were origin- 
ally revealed to us by handling objects of 
such size and shape, or by measuring the dis- 
tances by reaching out for the objects, or 
walking up to them ; and to the further fact 
that we have forgotten the many sense tests, 
often made quite unconsciously, thru which 
we have gathered our experience, slowly, 
gradually, laboriously, when we were chil- 
dren. Similar associations enable us to ap- 
preciate the meaning of paintings in which 
these same light and color effects are skill- 
fully imitated. 

From the first efforts of the crowing babe 
34 



Motor and Sense Training 

in his crib to discover the nature of the 
queer shining specks dancing before his eyes, 
and which he finally learns to locate and rec- 
ognize, by playing with them, by feeling pain 
in them, and in numberless other ways, as 
parts of his own body, his own dear, plump 
little legs — from these baby experiments to 
those of the scientist who weighs our globe 
and measures the distance of stars, there is 
indeed a long journey, but the process is the 
same. 

The value of sense training, even in in- 
fancy, is thus clearly shown. Frobel recog- 
nized this need, and his u Mutter-und Kose- 
lieder" have been invented for the very pur- 
pose of enabling the mother to assist her babe 
in the mastering and control of this wealth 
of sense-impressions rushing at him from all 
sides. And in the kindergarten practice, the 
need of sense training is admitted and min- 
istered to, in a more or less thoro manner. 
But the recognition of this need which is 
verily paramount, must be continued thruout 
the school, up to the highest classes. 

The intellectual value of motor activity is 
so high that its repression is fraught with 
danger in regard to a healthful manifesta- 
tion of the mind. "Motor centres make up 
35 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

about 1-3 of the brain. ... By motor 
training, brain growth and mental activity 
are increased and new avenues are opened 
leading to a more intimate acquaintance with 
the world."* If we remember that the sense 
of touch, combined with the muscular sense, is 
the most primitive one from which all others 
have gradually evolved, it will at once be 
clear that the touch and motor centers which 
control this province of sensations, are the 
very first to develop in the brain, and that 
they must be helped in their development by 
use and practice. The other centres, the 
other portions of the brain develop at later 
periods. But "if the centre is forced before 
its time, disorders of muscle and nerve con- 
trol result" (Hancock, 1. c). Knowing this, 
we need not be surprised why children whose 
later and higher brain centres are stimulated 
artificially and prematurely, are apt to be- 
come nervous and abnormal. The percent- 
age of pupils in which nervous disorders are 
produced by the prevailing irrational meth- 
ods and standards of education is appalling- 
ly high. And let us not deceive ourselves by 
believing that we gain time by making a 



*Hancock, Pedagogical Seminary, Oct. 

36 



Motor and Sense Training 

child learn at the earliest possible moment 
what ought to be postponed to a later per- 
iod, when his brain is prepared and mature 
enough for the work. All the seeming bril- 
liancy of his tender age will not prevent him 
from becoming really weakened and retarded 
in his growth; he may never really mature. 
Child prodigies rarely continue to develop 
after attaining adult age. An English critic 
has justly accused the ordinary methods by 
which an artificial stimulation is effected, of 
producing stupidity rather than intelligence, 
dullness rather than alertness, degeneration 
rather than progress. 



37 



Ill 

The Lesson of the Centipede 

Children of young years are not capable 
of abstract, logical work; the ability to rea- 
son is a late and slow growth. They learn 
by objective, not by abstract means; by mus- 
cular, not by intellectual observation. They 
absorb more than they abstract; they per- 
ceive more than they can reason out; they 
can do more than they can argue about and 
tell. Theirs is an instinctive activity, not 
a reflective. Beware of making the child re- 
flective and self-conscious before his time ! 
His fate may be that of the Centipede of 
whom the poet sings: 

"The Centipede was happy quite, 
Until the toad in fun 

Said : 'Pray, which leg comes after which ?' 
Which worked her mind to such a pitch, 
She lay distracted in the ditch, 
Considering how to run." 

As Channing puts it: "The best chance 
of all is not to be hurried; for the bright 
ones will learn all the better in late years 
for prolonged, early physical training, and 
the defective ones will only tend to develop 
their inherent weaknesses without it." 

38 



The Lesson of the Centipede 

This demand does not imply that the chil- 
dren must be left idly to themselves; cer- 
tainly not. An idle child is never a normal 
child. There must be full activity, concen- 
tration of attention, training in the making 
of strenuous effort by arousing native and 
intense interest. This interest may not al- 
ways assert itself spontaneously, but, lying 
dormant on account of an unsympathetic or 
otherwise unfavorable environment, may 
need an awakening. The child needs exercise, 
healthful physical exercise, which will help 
our children to unfold their native strength 
to the highest pitch. 

This plea for the recognition of the natural 
instincts of children, of their need for motor 
activity, refers not only to very young chil- 
dren. There are several other periods in a 
child's life when the motor forces should 
have the preference. Young girls as well as 
boys in the pubescent period should have 
much more physical training and much less 
mental overstraining than they have now, 
when just at this critical age they are ex- 
pected to graduate with all honors from 
schools and academies. 

I quote from an instructive article in the 
"Child Study Monthly" (November 1897), 
39 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

treating of this same period: "Too many 
studies are imposed or permitted. Too 
much time is spent indoors. The recess, in- 
stead of being a time for real health-giving 
physical romps and exercise, is devoted to 
crocheting, making hemstitched, feather- 
edge or herring-bone trimming. The pomp 
and parade of public exercises, especially 
commencement, the pressure and excitement 
induced by working for marks and cram- 
ming for examinations, are not entirely the 
fault of the school, but rather the fault of 
the parents who demand that their own 
daughters be conspicuous above their mates 
in school. These girls love to please their 
blindly ambitious parents and spur their 
overworked bodies beyond the point of re- 
covery from fatigue, at too great expense 
of real energy and nerve force. When will 
parents learn that a whole ton of knowledge 
gained at the expense of a single ounce of 
health is far too dearly paid for?" 
"TOO MUCH BRAIN WORK AND 
TOO LITTLE BODY WORK IS THE 
EVIL OF OUR SCHOOLS." 

The brain work referred to here is of 
course the one-sided stimulation and prema- 
ture forcing of the higher centres; brain 
40 



The Lesson of the Centipede 

training thru rational sense training and mo- 
tor activity will re-establish the balance in 
these critical periods. 

The motor element must be recognized 
thruout the school course. The present 
standard of education is altogether false. 
We must learn to recognize fully the new 
principle of Learning by Doing which is 
based upon an appreciation of the natural 
instincts, not only of childhood, but of the 
human race. 



41 



IV 

Experience vs. Book Learning 

A certain class of so-called educated per- 
sons imagine themselves very superior beings 
if they can recite from memory an algebraic 
formula, or know how to spell "paral- 
lelepipedon", or can call a sparrow by its 
Latin or French name. To possess such 
knowledge is perhaps an enviable thing; yet 
any ordinary carpenter may throw such a 
fine person into the utmost confusion by ask- 
ing him questions upon very simple proper- 
ties of matter and very common operations, 
even tho he may not be able to spell his 
name. We need not undervalue literary 
education, and may deplore the illiteracy of 
a still too large percentage of our people as 
a great evil; and yet believe that ordinary 
school branches are not all there is of educa- 
tion. A great deal of training can be de- 
rived from the common pursuits of life, from 
the practice of the arts and trades — really a 
mine of intellectual wealth of which many 
have very scant appreciation. A "common" 
man, if he is otherwise effective in his pro- 
fession, may shame a philosopher in intel- 
ligence and "common sense", if the latter be 

42 



Experience vs. Book Learning 

a mere theorist, with little knowledge of the 
world of reality. 

Learning from books about the tendency 
of water to seek the lowest level is certainly 
less effectual than to lay out and build an 
actual dam and canal for irrigation. And a 
theoretical knowledge of architecture is 
surely of less value than the practical ability 
to construct a Brooklyn Bridge or a Cologne 
Cathedral. Let us not confuse formal and 
conceptual education; and while we should 
give formal training its due place, and be in- 
spired by the lofty thoughts of the thinker 
and admire the works of the poet, 
of the historian, or the grammarian— : let 
us not forget the greatness of the 
DOERS, the creators among us whose works 
the others talk and write about, even tho 
these doers be poor spellers and unreliable 
geographers. An ingenious machine that 
seems almost endowed with human under- 
standing; a towering dome giving grandeur 
and character to an entire landscape; a mys- 
terious tunnel, hewn thru massive mountains 
and connecting two nations; or even the tiny 
shoe of a maiden if it fits the dainty foot with- 
out constraining the natural movement, are 
as much proofs of the ingenuity of the hu- 

43 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

man mind, as much triumphs of human crea- 
tiveness over the brute forces of the uni- 
verse, as much evidence of the nobility and 
divineness of human nature, as is the sweet- 
est song of a Tennyson, or the most power- 
ful drama of a Shakespeare. And altho the 
best work can be done only by the best 
trained man, by him who is a representative 
of the civilization of his time at its fullest, it 
must be remembered that some of the most 
immortal creations of the constructive mind 
have been produced by persons who were 
deficient in formal knowledge, in reading 
and writing and such things, from the per- 
iod of antiquity to our own era. All these 
activities are different expressions of ideas, 
more or less lofty and comprehensive, but 
yet borne up by aspiration towards perfec- 
tion. And while an even balance of all these 
different powers may make the ideal man, 
this glory is only for the greatest genius such 
as may bless the earth from time to time. We 
humbler mortals have each our special little 
gift or talent thru which we can render our 
mite of service. Let us give each child a 
chance to be himself, to work out his own 
destiny, to express the ideas and ideals he 
cherishes as best he can, in his own way, be it 

44 



Experience vs. Book Learning 

by planting trees, or by fitting machinery, or 
by writing articles for the daily press. And 
it is the doing of things which is ever the 
foundation of the thinking of thoughts ; and 
the thinking of thoughts is vain unless it in- 
spires the doing of things. 



45 



The Philosophy of the Tool 

Man's most faithful servant is his hand, and 
the hand's complement is the tool. "Tools", 
says Dr. Paul Carus in his interesting mono- 
graph, "The Philosophy of the Tool", "ex- 
tend the sphere of our existence. Ham- 
mers, spades, axes, are prolongations of our 
hands; the dairy, the bakery, the kitchen, are 
as it were appendices to our digestive or- 
gans, to the teeth and the stomach; engines 
and railroads are wings to our feet; and 
machinery of all descriptions are tools that 
have become independent, but still remain 
our faithful servants. Their work increases 
our powers and widens our dominion in na- 
ture. Every invention and perfection of 
tools represents a growth of power. . . . 
Man's reason has been developed by work- 
ing with tools, but the possibility of tools de- 
pends in its turn upon man's ability to han- 
dle tools. . . . The development of 
reason depends so much upon the proper me- 
chanical employment of our hands, that we 
even to-day use the words "to grasp", "to 
comprehend", "to conceive"* as expressions 



*Cf. the German "begreifen". G. 

4 6 



The Philosophy of the Tool 

denoting the most important act of a ra- 
tional cognition. . . . The history of 
tools, and of their invention, is the history of 
the growth of the human mind." 

If history were taught in our schools from 
the viewpoint of the evolution of culture and 
civilization, instead of as a record of wars 
and battles, this conception would long have 
been more generally accepted. But in the 
light of the essential facts of history, who can 
deny that the demand for manual training has 
a true claim? If man's reason has been de- 
veloped by working with tools, if the work 
of tools depends upon man's ability to han- 
dle them, has an instruction in the use of 
tools not a just place in the curriculum of 
the elementary school? This age of a tech- 
nical mastery of the world's forces, of com- 
merce and industry, of printing presses, rail- 
roads and electric lights, cannot be under- 
stood unless the child is introduced into a 
knowledge and appreciation of the motive 
power that makes this world of human ac- 
tivity move. From books he cannot get a clear 
conception of that; there is enough which 
must be got from them, but which will re- 
main unintelligible to him, a mere shadow, 
unless he has a basis of experience, typical 

47 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

experience, that can serve him as a key to un- 
derstand the rest. We ought to take our 
children into the machine shops and fac- 
tories to make them see with their own eyes 
typical illustrations of how things are made, 
and how the making even of apparently sim- 
ple things requires much skill and ingenuity. 
And better still, let us put them to work at 
such things; let us teach them the use of 
typical tools, such as the needle, the knife, 
the hammer, chisel and saw; of typical ma- 
chines, such as sjtoves, engines, lathes, sew- 
ing machines. They should build and con- 
struct dresses and boxes, chairs and dyna- 
moes; they should invent: designs, pat- 
terns, models, whatever they can. They 
should represent dramatically, as it were, 
and at the same time actively and practically, 
the various busy occupations of life. Then 
their conception of the world and of human 
activity will be broadened and elevated. 

But it is not industrial training, it is not 
trade schools for which I plead. They have 
their proper place at the proper stage, in a 
differentiated system of public instruction. 
Here, however, I wish to emphasize the gen- 
eral educational value of manual culture, its 
broadening influence, its effect upon mind 

4 8 



The Philosophy of the Tool 

culture, without which no child can develop 
to the fullest, were he to become a lawyer, or 
a merchant, or a shoemaker in later life. 
Men need to become more effective; they 
ought to have their chance of experience even 
in childhood, to make the best of it when the 
mind is still pliable. They should have an 
opportunity to test their faculties all around, 
when it is still time to grow, to mature, to 
choose. It is therefore no trade exercise, no 
one-sided work of any kind, whose introduc- 
tion in schools is desired, but typical exer- 
cises chosen to illustrate the possibilities of 
the human mind in the direction of produc- 
tive activity, just as a well chosen course in 
reading will illustrate, by typical selections, 
how the human mind has conquered the 
world by thought, or mirrored her life in its 
own emotions. 



49 



VI 

Not a New Branch, but a Method 

In reality it is not a new branch of instruc- 
tion for which a plea is here made, even tho 
manual training may mean a reduction of 
the time consumed by the so-called common 
branches. But these common branches will 
be the gainers thereby. The plea is made 
for a rational method of instruction — the 
objective, the creative, the experimental 
method as against the book method. Each 
school should be, in a sense, a laboratory 
where all branches are taught by the help 
of the laboratory method, by experiments 
and tests which are largely conducted by the 
pupils themselves. If there exists a well ar- 
ticulated and co-ordinated course of instruc- 
tion, there is mathematics in the workshop, 
there is history in the art studio, and better 
logical training than grammar affords, in 
the science laboratory; and there is health- 
ful exercise, and power, and inspiration in 
all these things. The spirit of this method 
must pervade all school work, so that there 
be reality instead of names, experience and 
practice instead of mere rules, self-expres- 
sion instead of routine work, individuality 

50 



Not a New Branch, but a Method 

instead of a common average. 

Such a method would be an appeal to the 
natural instincts of the children who delight 
in objective and constructive activity, whose 
play instinct is gratified by this work, and 
who will profit more from it than from defin- 
itions, and synopses, and booklore generally; 
who will do their best in spontaneous activ- 
ity, and who, being allowed to work in their 
own individual way, will develop the power 
of independent thinking. It is by objectify- 
ing, as it were, their concepts, by reproducing 
what they see, or study about, in tangible 
form, that they will test their power of ob- 
servation, correct their errors, adjust mis- 
proportions, and arrive at accurate ideas. 

We need have no fear that the language 
work of the children will suffer, if so much 
time and energy be given to manual exer- 
cises. On the contrary, our pupils will have 
a wealth of real things, of things that inter- 
est them, to write about. One who can think 
correctly, will, as a rule, speak and write 
correctly; and it is a common experience 
that, when we have something to say, we 
can say it. But normal children have little 
to say about fine emotions and self-conscious 
reflections; they may look up cyclopedias 
51 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

or torment their parents, their older broth- 
ers and sisters, for "points", and yet not 
produce anything of much use to themselves 
or to anybody else. But they can tell about 
what they have seen and heard and handled 
and made, and what interests them. Such 
work may not be so highflown as an essay 
on "The Vindication of Xanthippe", or a 
critical examination into the feelings of a 
butterfly on a summer's morning,* but it will 
be more genuine and helpful, especially if 
care be taken not to mass pupils together, 
but to grant each a chance to write about 
what he knows best. Many teachers will 
testify to the truth of the statement that ap- 
parently dull pupils, who were simply 
weighed down by the routine of mass work, 
suddenly woke up and displayed a remark- 
able power of observation and expression 
when the teacher hit upon a subject which 
was of interest to them. Thus, when a point 
of vantage is found, an avenue can soon be 
opened along which even those faculties 
which are either dormant, or truly weak, can 
be reached and more or less developed. 
And these points of vantage are almost in- 



*These topics are actual quotations. 

52 



Not a New Branch, but a Method 

variably in the nature of objective or con- 
structive work, of play or spontaneous ac- 
tivity which commands the child's supreme 
interest. 

In this way, manual work proves itself as 
a valuable instrument with which to influ- 
ence the growth of even the formal arts and 
more abstract faculties. 

But the manual method is a veritable 
savior of those who are not gifted in literary 
expression, or formal mathematics, or gram- 
mar and such things; whose principal, or 
only, form of expression is in the making of 
things. They, who are cast out as dunces 
from the ordinary school, often have a genius 
of their own which in due time may out- 
shine that of their classmates who were more 
successful at school. Should they not be 
considered? Let us give them their due, 
their opportunity, a training that is commen- 
surate to their faculties. There are more of 
them than some may suppose; the schools 
are full of them, only their native genius is 
repressed, and they are made to drag on in 
the primary classes until they can go no fur- 
ther, and are finally allowed to depart to 
drag on thru life, dwarfed, spoiled, robbed of 
their birthright. These who, with the ex- 

53 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

ception of conquering geniuses, never get a 
chance to find their true place in life, and to 
become conscious of their power and their 
limitations, help in composing the vast army 
of the inefficient who drift along, or move 
in ready made grooves whither they know 
not, but cannot make their own road, or set 
up their own goal. 

This alone would also prove the moral 
value of manual training. For he who drifts 
instead of controlling his fate as far as hu- 
man effort can avail, will never be a truly 
moral man. Morality means self-control, self- 
determination, self-direction. And manual 
training, sense training, makes for truth — as 
far as human mind can conceive truth. It 
sets reality against semblance, fact against 
error, test against illusion. It fosters a 
scientific spirit as opposed to opinionism 
and prejudice. It means, therefore, 
genuineness, in place of artificiality and 
verbalism. And it teaches the true dig- 
nity, the enormous moral significance of la- 
bor. "Work", as Carlyle puts it, "is the 
grand cure for all the maladies and miseries 
that ever beset mankind — honest work which 
you intend getting done." And again : "All 
true work is sacred; in all true work, were it 
54 



Not a New Branch, but a Method 

but true hand labor, there is something of 
divineness." Thru honest labor, the race 
and the individual can alone be saved from 
rot and ruin, from decay and degeneration. 
But above all, the principle of manual cul- 
ture recognizes the child's natural instincts. 
The child is by nature constructive, and in 
gratifying his tendency to grow intellectually 
by the work of his hands, we are but in ac- 
cord with the laws of natural development, 
which are the same for the race as for the in- 
dividual. Mankind has reached the present 
high state of civilization by conquering 
the forces of nature thru industry, the devel- 
opment of which has ever been the truest in- 
dex to its mental and moral evolution. 



55 



PART II. ART CULTURE AND ART 
EXPRESSION 



The Esthetic Attitude 

IN this age, when art enters into all the 
details of life, when it represents the 
stage of perfection in all manufactures 
as well as in the reproduction of the 
beautiful, pure and simple; when the ethical 
element in esthetic culture has become so 
widely appreciated; when one who cannot 
at least enjoy the masterpieces of great 
artists, is hardly counted among the 
truly educated: in such an age it ought 
to be superfluous to plead for a recognition 
of art education in the curriculum of our 
schools. And yet, drawing and modeling 
have been denounced as fads which take up 
time needed for more necessary and funda- 
mental things. More necessary and funda- 
mental things! If it is the end of education 
to awaken the faculty of judgment and to 
build up a moral character, to produce re- 
finement in place of crudity and immaturity: 
is it not worth more to a child to be able to 
appreciate the stern grandeur of Michel An- 
gelo's Moses or the chaste beauty of a Venus 
de Milo, and to have learnt to express his 
own thoughts of beauty, however stammer- 
ingly, in a drawing or clay model, or in some 

59 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

constructive way, — than to spell all the 
words in the English language by heart, or 
to distinguish between "distributive pro- 
nouns" and "compound indefinite pro- 
nouns?" Without knowledge of this gram- 
matical distinction he may yet be able to use 
very fair English, and if he should have for- 
gotten the spelling of "idiosyncrasy", he can 
look it up in the dictionary. But an esthetic 
attitude, such as will result from careful 
training in art conception and art expression, 
during his young years, cannot be easily dis- 
pensed with or quickly replaced. 

Drawing, at least, became recognized in 
the program of some schools a few decades 
ago, when the wave of the practical-educa- 
tion idea struck them. Under the watch- 
word: We must give our children a prac- 
tical education, many pedagogical sins have 
been committed. It was claimed that it was 
of practical benefit to a child if he would 
learn to draw designs, decorative motives 
and the like ; just as it has been suggested to 
introduce systematic bookkeeping into the 
elementary schools, — for such things, it is 
thought, can be easily converted into dollars 
and cents as soon as the young person goes 
out to earn his or her own living, or pocket 
60 



The Esthetic Attitude 

money. In point of fact, school bookkeeping 
has proved itself to be of very doubtful value 
to the practical merchant; and school de- 
signing has perhaps been even less market- 
able. But still, under the name of "indus- 
trial drawing" a great deal of geometrical 
construction and conventional designing has 
been done — and is being done yet in a num- 
ber of schools— mostly in the form of copy- 
ing and dictation. But this is not art. 

Deeper insight into child-psychology has 
revealed the true function of art education. 



61 



II 



Expression thru Art 

Art training in schools does not mean in- 
struction in drawing only. We shall see la- 
ter that drawing is in fact the most difficult 
part of the art. Art training includes model- 
ing in clay, paper cutting, color work, 
construction, decoration (on paper, in 
carving, weaving, etc.), and a number of 
other occupations. It means beautifying the 
objects the child handles, or makes, or loves. 
It means the beautifying, finishing touch to 
all his products. Art is the manifestation of 
the highest genius of the race; it makes the 
creature a creator; it means a rebirth of the 
world, from the mind of a human being, so 
that it may become his own world, his own 
life, his own glory and perfection. It is thru 
art that man divines the divine. 

Art will pervade all the child does. It is 
the liberating element in manual culture. It 
is the noblest form of motor expression. It 
is expression. Let us be definite about this: 
It is expression as much as language is. 
The language of the pyramids speaks to us 
with a powerful voice, and the wall-paint- 
ings of ancient Egypt tell us more about her 
62 



Expression Thru Art 

civilization which has long since vanished 
from the face of the earth, than even the 
papyrus rolls of their contemporaries. And 
long before there were books, there was art. 
The carvings of the Fiji Islanders, the pic- 
ture writings of the American Indians, the 
hieroglyphics of ancient Peru and Mexico 
are a treasure trove of ancient historic docu- 
ments. 

Thus, even to a young child of a mod- 
ern father and mother, art is a form of ex- 
pression which develops even before he can 
express his conceptions adequately in oral 
or written form. The child loves to build 
structures in the sand and mud, or with 
blocks and toys; to cut out and draw, long 
ere he can write a composition on the 
thoughts which these representations em- 
body. He who can read a child's mud pies 
and scribblings, will get a deeper insight into 
his nature than he who waits until the child 
can tell him, or write out for him, what he 
has in mind. This instinct is a relic of race- 
history and must be so understood and util- 
ized. With many people, this objective, or 
graphic, or constructive form of expression 
will forever remain the best part of their 
self-manifestation; and the revelation that 

63 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

comes to us of the genius of Raphael in con- 
templating his wonderful Sistine Madonna, 
would hardly have been enhanced if he had 
attempted to write out his conception of di- 
vine motherhood with pen and paper. And 
with most children, representative expres- 
sion, which is at the same time creative, i. e., 
art expression, will strengthen the power of 
right conception and the power of self-ex- 
pression in general, while, if it is condemned 
and repressed as idle play, the child's psyche 
may remain crippled forever. 

Children's drawings, then, give a clearer 
and more comprehensive account of their 
concepts than their words and, later on, even 
their written exercises will ever reveal. Let 
us remember that the power of complete 
self-expression in language is given to few 
master minds only and develops slowly in 
any one of us, and that there are many things 
at all times which we can better illustrate 
than tell. Children's drawings expose there- 
fore also all their mistakes in conception, 
and such exposure will help the teacher to 
discover, and correct, erroneous impres- 
sions. If a child is asked to illustrate a 
story, his misconception of words often 
shows itself significantly. A case in point is 

6 4 



Expression Thru Art 

quoted from a San Francisco primary 
school. "'The Old Oaken Bucket' had 
been read to the little tots and then ex- 
plained to them very carefully, and as "busy 
work" they were asked to copy the first stan- 
za from the blackboard and illustrate it with 
a drawing. One little girl handed in her verse 
with several little dots between two of the 
lines, a circle, and three buckets. 'Lizzie, 
I don't understand this', said the teacher. 
'What is that circle?' — 'Oh, that's the well.' 
— 'Why have you three buckets?' — 'One is 
the old oaken bucket, one is the iron-bound 
bucket, and the other is the bucket that hung 
in the well.' — 'Then, what are all of those 
little dots?' — 'Why, those are the loved 
spots which my infancy knew.' " 

It is well, in this connection, to compare 
Professor Earl Barnes' early investigations 
on children's drawings. In No. V of his 
"Studies in Education" (Nov. 96) he repro- 
duces four drawings of Washington and the 
Cherry Tree, by children, and comments upon 
them as follows: "Do not the pictures il- 
lustrate the way in which a child pieces all 
the fragments of his knowledge together in 
making up what to us seem very simple 
concepts? . . . The child never grasps 

65 



Some Fundamental Ferities in Education 

the absurdity of the combination; for he 
does not take the whole thing into conscious- 
ness at once as we should do. ... If 
this analysis of the picture is correct, then 
we see how the most heterogeneous elements 
are combined in forming concepts under our 
direction. Is it not much the same with us 
when we rise to higher planes? Take for 
instance our conception of an angel : is it not 
pieced together from just such odds and ends 
as these? If this analysis is right, it fol- 
lows, then, that in education we need to con- 
sider not only the fragments that we insert 
into children's minds, but the blended 
whole that they piece together." 

The use of drawing in this direction ap- 
pears obvious. And it is well, apart from 
any ambition to be artistic, that we should 
learn to express our concepts graphically in 
some adequate degree, to supplement our 
language, so that we may make our meaning 
clear in as complete a manner as possible, 
when occasion arises. If we wish to have a 
certain pattern made, or give a direction as 
to some piece of furniture we desire to have 
fitted into a certain space; or if we want to 
describe an occurrence that we have wit- 
nessed; or if a physician desires to fix some 
66 



Expression Thru Art 

microscopic observation on paper; and in a 
thousand other ways, — some skill in draw- 
ing to express our thoughts, or to record our 
observations— be it diagrammatically or by 
way of a more or less perfect representation 
of the object — will be found exceedingly 
helpful and often indeed indispensable. Our 
words not infrequently prove insufficient to 
describe what we have in mind. 

Moreover, an effort to draw an object will 
intensify the clearness of our perception, 
and bring out, and fix in our mind, many de- 
tails that would otherwise have escaped our 
attention. Drawing shares in this respect 
the virtue of manual reproduction and con- 
struction, and we shall see later that the ar- 
tistic correlative to manual construction, 
viz.: clay modeling, has its peculiar excel- 
lence. It is well to encourage the drawing 
of the objects of study, in the laboratory, in 
geography, in history, etc., to produce more 
lasting and more exact impressions, and to 
test the correctness of the concepts. 

I do not pretend to say that this kind of 
representative drawing is art proper, or art 
as yet; just as little as the compositions of 
young children have value as literature. But 
it helps in the development of the self, and 
67 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

points towards art; it is as legitimate a form 
of expression as any other. 

Drawing, it has been said, is the general 
language of construction. It enters into man- 
ual work at every point, and geometrical un- 
derstanding would be impossible without it. 
In this form, it is not an immediate art ex- 
pression, but may be a means towards it, if 
the end sought is the expression of an art 
idea, as in architecture. To be able to read a 
working drawing, a plan, a chart, and to 
make such drawings, is a necessary requisite 
in manual work. But this does not imply 
that a course in the technique of drawing, in 
mechanical drawing, should come first. Such 
a course would, in many cases, only kill the 
spontaneous art instinct and art enjoyment. 
There is not much need of such training for 
children, certainly not in the lower grades. 
Exactly as we must not apply the adult's 
standard of accuracy to the productions of the 
child in the field of manual training itself, 
just as little is there need of enforcing exact 
technique in the drawings that enter into 
that work. Only when the child himself 
feels the need of training in technique, 
should instruction therein be supplied. As a 
rule it will sufiice to point out a few simple 
68 



Expression Thru Art 

rules and devices, and let the rest come by 
practice in connection with actual exercises. 
In the highest classes, in connection perhaps 
with the more scientific study of geometrical 
problems, in architectural drawings to a 
scale, and for the purpose of assisting the 
pupil in getting better control over the mus- 
cles of eye, hand and fingers, to secure finer 
adjustment, more stress may justly be laid 
upon exact drawings. But even here, we 
must exercise discretion and not elevate an 
exactness which is possible to perhaps only a 
few, into a fetich to be worshipped by all. 
At any rate, young children should be saved 
from the tyranny of this superstition. 

I wish to warn art teachers against the 
gospel of the straight line. The straight 
line is an abstraction. Nature knows of no 
absolutely straight line, except perhaps in 
minute proportions. The straight line is a 
mechanical invention, but has no virtue in 
itself except for purely mechanical purposes 
—for manufacture in the trade sense. Our 
children have nothing to do with it. They 
are not ripe for it— fortunately not. Their 
minds cannot yet be reduced to a rectilinear 
conventionality. There is no character in 
the straight line, just as a man whose path 

6 9 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

in life is absolutely straight, is either an an- 
gel or a fool; either a mechanical contriv- 
ance, a soulless pedant, or a bigoted fanatic, 
but not one with a genuinely human char- 
acter. I am afraid of the infallible. To 
make the young child a victim of the soulless 
straight line, is as cruel as it is useless. 

True art is more than reducing the ob- 
jects of nature to a geometrical "type", or 
than their mere mechanical reproduction; In 
the same way as literature is more than an 
enumeration of the things the author has in 
mind. Art and literature represent the indi- 
vidual attitude of the artist or author towards 
nature and life; they show how nature and 
life picture themselves in these human minds. 
No great poem, no great painting, no great 
work of sculpture that does not suggest a no- 
ble thought or a noble feeling, a thought or 
feeling that had been in the minds of their 
makers, struggling for expression. A great 
artist, as well as a great poet, is first a great 
man, a man with a noble soul, which is re- 
vealed in his works. Art is self-expression, 
and from it we may read character as we do 
from literature. 

Not every one can produce literature that 
will become the common property of the 
70 



Expression Thru Art 

world, because not everyone can think eter- 
nal thoughts, or has literary power to ex- 
press them in immortal form. But every 
one can learn to express his own thoughts in 
his own words — not very fluently perhaps, 
but in a manner, or style, peculiar to himself 
and which is as much an index of his mental 
calibre as is the thought itself. Likewise, 
altho not everyone can produce works of 
art worthy of a Phidias or Raphael, yet 
everyone can learn, in a measure, to express 
himself in art form, if he is left free to do it 
in his own way which will be characteristic 
of himself, provided he has something to ex- 
press. If we understand art to mean indi- 
vidual expression of a thought or feeling, 
we shall at once perceive that for every at- 
tempt to draw or model anything, there must 
first be a thought or a feeling in the child's 
mind, one which is his own, which is more 
or less spontaneous, first hand, not second 
hand, intense, full of motive power so as to 
struggle for expression; and second, there 
must be as little as possible of restraint, of 
conventional rule, and the largest possible 
latitude for individual form of expression, 
freedom and individuality. 

There must he, first, a thought or feeling 
71 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

in the child's mind that seeks expression. 
The clearer this is understood, the better. 
A realization of this fact will once for all 
do away with the senseless exercises so com- 
mon in many drawing courses, and which 
mean nothing to the child. If we study the 
child life of our greatest painters and sculp- 
tors, we shall find that they did not go to 
work drawing straight lines, or a cube, or 
modeling a perfect sphere. Perhaps there 
was a time in their life, later on, when their 
minds were maturer, when they had to en- 
dure the drudgery of technique to perfect 
themselves in their vocation. But, while 
they were young, they did not go for in- 
spiration to cubes and spheres. They drew 
what they loved most — they took a bold 
hold of anything in their environment that 
appealed to their innermost soul on account 
of its beauty, its harmony of form or color, 
its meaning and association. They would 
beautify by decoration such things as were 
dear to them: the first leaf in an album 
which their mother had given them, or a 
scarf they would present to their sister, or 
perhaps, blushingly and full of strange emo- 
tions, send to their first girl love. And nothing 
would seem to them too difficult to attempt. 
72 



Expression Thru Art 

They gloried in color, they were enrap- 
tured by the multitude of wonderful forms 
surrounding them. Oh, for that transcend- 
ent ecstacy of youth, when all the world is 
ours, when we do not yet know our measure, 
when we strive for the highest, like unto the 
babe that will, with its tiny arms, reach out 
for the shining moon ! Let us treasure it in 
our memory, let us jealously preserve it in 
our children. They will run against the 
walls which hedge in the province of the pos- 
sible, only too soon; and when the time of 
disappointment, of disillusion, arrives, then 
we should stand at their side and guide their 
steps, and revive their hopes, and strengthen 
their power, so that they may build up a new 
world of reality which will be no less their 
own than their world of beautiful fancy had 
been. What to the child whose mind is not 
yet rational would have been like cruel ty- 
ranny, like lack of sympathy, what would 
have meant for him a disenchantment, a 
spoliation — will appear to the struggling 
youth like a new revelation, a succor and re- 
lief whose immediate need is deeply felt. 
We must render technical help only when it 
is needed; or it will have the effect of offi- 
cioysness and repression. 

73 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

Besides, the time we can devote to art edu- 
cation in school is so short, so few of the 
pupils will ever be in a condition to pur- 
sue art as their life vocation when they will 
need technical drill, that we should bend all 
our energies upon inspiring their youthful 
soul with a true interest in, and love for, the 
beautiful. True interest and true love mean 
not merely an attitude of contemplation, of 
admiration for beautiful objects and works 
of art ; but the desire to do, to be ourselves 
a power, to create as best we can. 

Art work should therefore be co-ordinated 
with all those activities and interests in which 
the children take their most spontaneous and 
deepest delight. Let them illustrate the 
stories they enjoy most; design and weave in 
color blankets for their doll's beds; model 
vases and decorate them with gay flowers in 
water colors as a Christmas present for 
mother; or even make their own clay dolls 
in imitation of their elders; whatever fas- 
cinates their fancy, or interests them in their 
lessons, in history, geography, literature — 
whatever has a pictorial element (and what 
has not, as all our concepts can be reduced to 
more or less distinct images from the world 
of objects!) : all these are so many chances 
74 



Expression Thru Art 

for art expression. 

If we watch the children's own spontane- 
ous activity in this direction, we shall find 
that they do not care much for sentimental 
or contemplative subjects. Their interest 
centers in action; in motion rather than in 
repose. Stories where there is most of ac- 
tion have the intensest attractions. In like 
manner they will try to portray action, that 
is, human beings and animals in action; and 
even where there is a decorative purpose 
pure and simple, they will often, like the an- 
cient Greeks in the decoration of their vases, 
prefer illustrative to ornamental motives. It 
is more particularly the human form which 
attracts attention, and is represented over 
and over again. How the human form can 
be converted into a decorative motive of of- 
ten grotesque effect, a study of the art of the 
North American Indians will soon reveal. 
(Cf. Figs, i and 2.) 

The same line of thought suggests the 
reason why I have pleaded for freedom 
from restraint, from insistence upon rules, 
and directions, and so-called ''systematic de- 
velopment". Art expression is a very sensi- 
tive thing. It is just in the beginning of its 
evolution in the human soul when it bears 

75 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

the least interference. Such interference 
would quickly kill the germ of spontaneous 
creativeness. And it is a great mistake to 
imagine that you must first learn to draw, or 
model, a detail, before you can produce the 
whole. The child sees the whole first, and 
the part last. To work from details to the 
whole would be just as absurd as to insist 
that a child must first learn to spell all the 
words he may possibly use some time, or 
master all the rules of grammar and syn- 
tax, and write perfect sentences, before he 
can be allowed to express himself in lan- 
guage, by writing a letter or a composition. 
Sad to say, this thought-killing method is 
still the rule in only too many schools, and 
there are some whose pupils are not given 
an opportunity to say what they really think 
until very late in the course, if at all. The 
result is a dead thing— rules of grammar in- 
stead of a living thought. The truth of the 
matter is that the children will learn to ex- 
press themselves by intuition, by imitation, 
by absorption; that they will be able to 
write or speak with tolerable accuracy when 
they have something to say and are given 
frequent opportunities to express them- 
selves ; that if their ideas are clear and cor- 

76 



Expression Thru Art 

rect, they will find little difficulty in adequate 
expression. The prattle of children is so 
delightfully suggestive and to the point, be- 
fore it becomes hedged in by rules and 
u grammaticated", that its repression is a 
crime against the child-soul and its inalienable 
right of self-preservation. What we must 
work for is the thought, and the details will 
take care of themselves, at least for a while. 
Likewise art is expression : we must work 
for the thought first and primarily. Then 
as to method, attention must be paid to the 
general aspect of things, to the composition 
as a whole, to the character and swing of the 
figures, rather than to the details. It is an 
error to think that a child must draw leaves 
before he can draw a tree. As a matter of 
fact, it is easier to draw a whole landscape, 
with forests, and lakes, and houses, than to 
draw a single leaf, a single bough. Illustra- 
tions of this fact will be given later. We 
ought to work down from the whole to the 
parts, not exalt the parts to such an artificial 
importance that we may never reach the 
whole. 



77 



Ill 



An Experiment, and Conclusions Therefrom 

In the winter of 1896-97, an experiment 
was made in all classes of the "Ethical Cul- 
ture School" of New York, under my direc- 
tion, to test the pupils' ability to represent 
the human figure in clay, free-hand paper 
cutting, and drawing. Some of the results, 
all of which were truly remarkable, are here 
reproduced. Figs. 3-7 show some of the 
clay figures made by the children of differ- 
ent grades. The originals were from five 
to twelve inches high, and while the clay 
was fresh and the figures intact, surprising- 
ly expressive, spirited, and characteristic. 
No general directions were given as to what 
figures to model or how to go to work. All 
figures are imaginative. Figs. 8 and 9 are 
freehand cuttings from the III. Grade (pu- 
pils of about eight years of age) ; both were 
made from the object, a child posing for the 
class. Fig. 9 represents a boy with a cane in 
his hand; Fig. 8, a girl writing on the black- 
board. Fig 10 is a crayon drawing from 
the same grade; Figs. 11 to 17, from the iv. 
Grade (as to Figs. 1 1 to 13, it may be said 

78 




^ 



^J 






•5* 



isfl 


j 







A B 

Figure 3. Statuettes of the human form, by kindergarten pupils, 

lower left hand corner. In the middle of the picture is bunch 

of grapes by a First Grade pupil. Group A : Red 

Riding Hood and Wolf, by Second Grade. Figures 

B, Squirrels, and C, Swan, by Third Grade. 




Figure 4. Statuettes by Fourth Grade 

Figures J and 4. Clay Figures 




Figure 5. Statuettes by Fifth Grade 




Figure 6. Statuettes by Sixth Grade 



Figure 7. Statuettes by Seventh Grade 

Figures j, 6 and y. Clay Figures 




Figure 70. Crayon Drawing Grade III 




1 
So 




I 



is 







o 



s 







^ 



£0 


1 


5 


O 


^ 




5? 




v> 








Q 









s 




<m 




^ 








<a 




O 




^ 






^ 


- 


^ 




^ 


^ 


< 




<55 




»» 




o 



Figure 8 — Girl Writing Figure 9— Boy with Cane 
Freehand Cuttings, Grade 111 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

that the direction was given to omit the face 
if that proved too difficult) ; Fig. 18, from 
v. Grade; Fig. 19 from VI; Fig. 20 from vn; 
Fig. 21 from vm Grade. Figs. 14 to 17 
and Fig. 21 are by children who showed de- 
cided artistic talent; the others were drawn by 
ordinary children. In the vm. Grade, some 
previous training in drawing the human 
form had been given; in the lower grades, 
such practice had been only incidental. All 
the drawings, except Fig. 21, were from the 
object, individual children posing for the 
others. It should be said that drawing and 
modeling was a regular feature of the cur- 
riculum of the school where the experiment 
was made. 

Without discussing these productions in 
detail, we may draw the following general 
conclusions : 

( 1 )— Children are much more creative 
and able to express a thought or feeling ar- 
tistically with characteristic force than is 
generally supposed, or than the ordinary 
art courses in schools will allow them to put 
in display and practice. 

(2) — They are better able to represent 
the general swing and character of a whole, 
even one wb ; ch is apparently so difficult as 
80 



An Experiment, and Conclusions 

the human form, than to produce details ac- 
curately and in proper relation to the whole. 
(3) — There is no regular progress in 
ability and skill from the lower to the higher 
grades, individual differences and periodical 
fluctuations manifesting themselves at every 
step. 

(4)— In clay modeling, the results are 
most satisfactory, comparatively, while 
drawing seems to represent the greatest dif- 
ficulties. Freehand cutting occupies an in- 
termediate place. 

(5) — Freedom from restraint, from min- 
ute directions, and from mechanical exer- 
cises produces the best results. 

With this last conclusion I do not wish 
to imply that a child needs no guidance at 
all — that it is enough to give him a piece of 
clay, or a sheet of paper and a pencil, and 
tell him, Now, go on. Certainly he needs 
advice, he needs suggestion. But the form- 
er should be given, as stated before, with 
much discretion on the part of the teacher 
who ought to have himself the art spirit, and 
only when the child actually needs it; not pre- 
maturely, or in a nagging way. And the teach- 
er's function is to regulate the child's at- 
tempts so that he may learn to choose the 
81 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

best, and not waste time. A child is so open 
to suggestion, and so dependent upon it. 

There are several other points to be con- 
sidered in this connection : 

First — One of the commonest mistakes 
in directing children's work is to insist upon 
completing and correcting a piece of work 
once begun until it is "perfect". The same 
is often being done with regard to essay 
writing: children are made to write an es- 
say over and over again until it is "free 
from mistakes" and until the child is sick 
and tired of it. We must not measure 
child's work by an adult standard. If this 
is true of any kind of activity, it is particu- 
larly true of art expression which will de- 
generate into drudgery as soon as we de- 
prive it of the character of a humanizing en- 
joyment. If a young child is forced to toil 
over a drawing or model after he has lost 
interest in it, his results will not count for 
much. Better let him begin a new piece of 
work, even tho he may not have time to 
finish the task. Whatever virtue there is in 
the completion of a work once begun, in the 
patient toiling on until the task is done: 
such virtue is not the young child's. A 
child's attention cannot be fixed long; his 
82 



An Experiment, and Conclusions 

nature demands frequent changes of activ- 
ity and interest. The child is making only a 
beginning of life; and it is our privilege to 
help him in making a good beginning. Then 
we can be hopeful that he will end well. The 
difficulty lies just in beginning right. The 
child often fails in the execution of things 
because he began wrong. His is not the 
ability to plan ahead — such circumspection 
is but slowly acquired. To profit from his 
errors is the wisdom of the sage : the child 
possesses little of this wisdom. He must 
begin many times before he will realize his 
error. Therefore, rather than insist upon 
nice and exact finishing, let us encourage 
efforts to begin right, and be satisfied 
with otherwise crude execution. It is re- 
markable how quickly children will pro- 
gress after they have learnt how to begin, 
and how much pleasure they will then take 
in finishing. 

There is another side to this caution. 
The toilsome finishing of one piece before 
another is taken up will not only seriously 
diminish the child's interest in his work; 
but it will consume an undue amount of time 
and will thus deprive him of the benefit of 
trying his hand on a greater variety of sub- 

83 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

jects. Skill comes thru practice— but not 
so much thru practice within a limited 
circle of experience, as thru such that 
takes in a wide range of tasks and tests. 
The child, at any rate, must explore a large 
field of possibilities before he will discover 
the little groove along which he can do his 
best and quickest work. "There is," said 
ex-President Eliot, u a general misunder- 
standing of the word 'thoro' as applied 
to an education. There should be a distinc- 
tion between a sound education and a thoro 
training in insignificant things. 'Thoro' 
is an exceedingly mischievous word. It 
conceives something which it is impossible 
for an adult to accomplish and which it is 
monstrous to try to force a child to under- 
take. Is there anything in which any of us 
is thoro? It is not to be expected that 
anyone can become thoro in any branch 
of human endeavor. It is often a terrible 
waste of time to attempt it, and it is only 
in a mechanical sense of the word that it is 
achieved. If one could get rid of this idea 
of thoroness, one would lighten the bur- 
dens of childhood. Thoroness means stu- 
pidity and lack of interest. Stimulate the 
children to interest and the children will be 

8 4 



An Experiment, and Conclusions 

happy. Diversity of studies increases in- 
terest and that interest is enjoyable and 
wholesome. . . . Under the pretense 
of aiming at thoroness, many teachers 
positively destroy the children's interest. 
If we look at education as the 
cramming of information, we might not find 
time for the subjects that help to increase 
the richness and happiness of life". 

My second caution is this: If it is true 
that the child's standard is not that of the 
adult, we must not judge of a child's form 
of expression from the standpoint of the 
adult. What may mean nothing to us, may 
mean very much to the child. In other 
words, we must take the child at his own 
terms; we must estimate the work of a 
child, and render suggestion and direction, on 
a psychological basis, on the basis of the 
psychological evolution of the child-soul. 
The child's power to see things, to under- 
stand things, and to reproduce things, is 
limited, and his ability to control his finest 
adjustments of muscles and nerves so as to 
produce exact results is growing at a very 
slow rate. But my second caution means a 
great many other things of which I can men- 
tion only a few salient points. 

85 



IV 

Interpretation and Symbolism in Art Expres- 



sion 



Let us compare a photograph with our 
mind-picture of the same scenery. To pro- 
duce a photographic picture which has 
something of the quality of a mental image, 
is in itself an art. Ordinary photographs 
are as a rule disappointing; they contain 
many details of whose presence we were 
hardly aware and which disturb the har- 
mony of our impression; and the very things 
that we are interested in, look much smaller 
and more insignificant than they live in our 
memory. The reason is this: a photo- 
graphic camera is a mechanical eye which 
records in a mechanical way. But the hu- 
man eye is the organ of our mind. What 
is of no interest to us we hardly see at all, 
while those objects on which our interest is 
focused stand out boldly, and really out of 
natural proportions. And then, a very in- 
distinct visual image may call up very dis- 
tinct mental images, or memories. Thus we 
supply from our memory many details which 
as a matter of fact we do not see at all. Let 
us imagine ourselves watching a passing 
86 . 



Interpretation and Symbolism in Art 

procession: now and then, out of the cur- 
rent of faces streaming by, some familiar 
feature strikes us — the color of somebody's 
hair, a Roman nose, a full beard of familiar 
cut. We recognize these as belonging to 
some of our friends whom we expected to 
see in the procession, and in our mind we 
single out these individuals, supply from 
our memory the rest of the face and figure, 
and imagine we saw it all. But if we had 
taken an instantaneous photograph of the 
same scene, the probability is that the plate 
would record only a crowd with details quite 
indistinguishable, and we would look for the 
figures of our friends in vain.* 

Or suppose we sail on the high sea. In 
the distance there appears a small dark spot; 
the object comes nearer: we recognize a 
steamer crossing our path. We see the 
smoke stack and the bridge; we even imag- 
ine we see the people moving about, and 
a great many details. If we take a photo- 
graph of the steamer, ever so large and dis- 



*Cf. in this connection the two illustrations on pages 
519 and 520 in 'The Open Court", September, 1897; 
the first representing the Papal procession in the Basilica, 
during the ceremony of canonisation, from an actual 
photograph ; the second, the same scene, drawn from the 
preceding photograph by E. Limmer for the Illustrirte 
Zeitung. 

87 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

tinct, the chances are that we shall recognize 
few of these details. We had supplied 
them from our stock of previous experi- 
ences; we had seen them with our mind's 
eye, because we knew they were there. But 
to our physical eye, these details were really 
indistinguishable. 

This means that we interpret what we see 
according to our greater or lesser stock of 
previous experiences; that we magnify ob- 
jects which are familiar or of interest to us; 
that we single them out; while unfamiliar or 
uninteresting objects remain in the back- 
ground. In primitive art, important ob- 
jects or personages are invariably repre- 
sented in larger proportion than the rest of 
the picture. 

As in oral descriptions, different persons 
will give very different accounts of the same 
scene or occurrence, so artists will produce 
very different representations of the same 
scenery. The reason is, they were different- 
ly impressed; with their minds' eye they 
saw different things in different relations. 
Here again, we have a corroboration of the 
truth previously emphasized, viz., that art 
is not a mere recording of facts, but the ex- 
pression of an individual attitude. 
88 



Interpretation and Symbolism in Art 

It seems very plain, then, that children 
will represent things quite differently from 
what adults might expect. They will see 
with the minds of children, not with that of 
an adult. Things that interest them most, 
tho they may not seem very essential to 
us, will appear most prominent, even magni- 
fied, in their drawings; and their know- 
ledge of the quality and structure of objects 
differing from ours, their pictures will dif- 
fer. But they will often record all they 
know of an object, even tho, at the time 
of drawing, they did not see these details, 
and by the laws of perspective could not 
possibly have seen them from where they 
sat. They will sometimes draw in a manner 
as if they could see around, or thru, an 
object. Fragmentary and unharmonized, 
unconscious of law and logical order as their 
thinking is, so their pictures will be a conglom- 
eration of unharmonized representations 
which to our cultivated and trained minds 
may appear as very bungling attempts at 
art. And yet, we ought to judge them on 
their own merit, and understand the child's 
standpoint and stage of development. 

Then, after all, art expression is in its 
very nature symbolical. If we look at a 

8 9 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

bold pencil drawing where a very few tell- 
ing lines indicate a hill with trees, a cottage 
on top and the sea in the background: we 
admire the sketch, and it means something 
to us, not because it is an exact copy of na- 
ture, but because the art of the designer con- 
jures up in our mind memory images of hills 
and trees and the sea. We clothe the poor 
sketch with all the colors of life from our 
own previous impressions. Or rather, the 
drawing opens up an avenue of thought to 
us; thru it, as it were, we view distant 
scenes as once they have been present to our 
enraptured eyes. No matter whether the 
artist would add color to his sketch: the 
most ingenious painting falls far short of 
nature and is but a symbol of what it repre- 
sents. By a skillful arrangement of color 
effects we are reminded of actual sense im- 
pressions, and our memory supplies what a 
picture can never exhibit. We interpret 
pictures as we interpret the image of real 
things on our retina, by what we see with 
our inner eye. 

Symbols are all more or less conven- 
tional; and if art is symbolical in character, 
it must use conventional ways which only the 
initiated will fully appreciate. It may be 
90 



Interpretation and Symbolism in Art 

difficult for us to realize that our master- 
pieces of art employ conventional symbols 
needful of interpretation. And yet, this is 
a fact, tho we may admit that art has 
reached a perfection which makes it a much 
more ready vehicle of thought than it was 
on any previous stage. Egyptian paintings 
look very awkward to us, but to the ancients 
they meant as much as a modern painting 
does to us. 

Conventional symbols in art will corre- 
spond very closely to the ability of the mind 
to interpret the world around it, even tho 
the mind will often outgrow one set of sym- 
bols more quickly than it is able to construct 
a new, progressive set. Our modern pic- 
tures, however, are not readily intelligible 
to a savage, or a young child. And further- 
more, the difference in artistic taste may in 
the last instance be explained by the as- 
sumption that there are individual differ- 
ences of interpretation — that the symbols of 
one are not the symbols of another — that 
one way of painting a picture may not as 
readily call up mental images in the minds 
of certain individuals as another. A visit to 
one of the larger galleries where different 
schools of painting and sculpture are repre- 
91 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

sented, if some attention is paid to the re- 
marks of the people looking at the pictures 
and statues, will soon convince everyone of 
the truth of this observation. 

All this simply proves that there are in- 
dividual attitudes in art expression as well 
as in art appreciation. Applied to children's 
work, it means that we must often respect 
their individual form of expression when it 
may be difficult for us to understand it. And 
there is a deeper reason for judging of chil- 
dren's productions in this sense, on their own 
merits. 



92 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

Symbolism in artistic expression is mani- 
festly not an arbitrary thing; it is not man- 
ufactured, or invented, by some artist, or 
clique of artists. It represents a mode of 
thinking; it corresponds to an attitude of 
the mind, to its degree of ability, as said be- 
fore, to apperceive and interpret the world 
around us. The form in which the artistic 
idea expresses itself, is a growth, as is lan- 
guage which is thoroly symbolical. Look- 
ing up the words of the English lan- 
guage in an etymological dictionary will 
soon convince us of this fact. Growth, how- 
ever, is subject to biological laws, and its 
subsequent stages are determined by the 
working of these laws. It is exceedingly in- 
teresting to study the stages thru which 
our race has passed, in art expression. 
There is a long way from the art of the 
savages, thru Assyrian and Egyptian, to 
Greek and Roman art, and from there to 
our own time. And there are detached 
branches, or separate saplings, that had 
their own growth, such as Chinese and Jap- 
anese art. The true significance of the con- 
ception of art expression as a growth, sub- 

93 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

ject to biological laws, will reveal itself to 
us if we remember that there is a close par- 
allelism between the development of the 
soul of the individual and that of the race. 
A child passes from birth to maturity 
thru a continuous series of stages, or 
periods, each of which is a revival of an 
epoch in the history of culture. He passes 
thru the same stages of mental develop- 
ment thru which the race has passed. 
Observations of children have established 
this fact beyond a doubt. And this sequence 
of mental culture epochs is but the spiritual 
side of a well-known biological phenom- 
enon, viz., the evolution of the human body 
from its incipient embryonic stage thru 
a series of forms which broadly correspond 
to the characteristics of lower forms of life, 
until finally the mature human form is per- 
fected. And as even the adult body con- 
tains a number of so-called rudimentary or- 
gans which are of no apparent service in the 
present stage of human development, but 
are relics of past stages : so there are in our 
mind many rudimentary traits, or atavistic 
peculiarities, which remind us that we owe 
our present civilization to a process of long 
evolution from savage conditions. In chil- 
94 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

dren, these traits are easily distinguishable 
by the psychologist. 

In the development of art expression, we 
can clearly discriminate these mental culture 
epochs, from childhood to adult age, and 
this very fact proves, as said before, that 
the deeper cause of difference in the form 
of artistic expression, between the child and 
the adult, is due to biological laws even 
tho we may not yet understand the psy- 
chological process. Some experiments which 
I had occasion to make have given some de- 
gree of certainty to this view. 

These experiments were made at the 
"Ethical Culture School" in 1894, for the 
purpose of ascertaining in what measure 
children's drawings would correspond to 
savage and Egyptian drawings of the same 
kind and of kindred themes. In Egyptian 
work, all objects are so drawn as to expose 
their characteristic side to view. The ground, 
roads, meadows, ponds, are drawn as they 
would appear from above; a man standing 
on the opposite side of an oval pond looks 
as if he were placed on a blue bag. Let us 
look at Fig. 22, a pond with palms.* The 



*From Dr. K. Oppel, "Das alte Wunderland der Pyra- 
mid 'en" ', Leipzig, 1881, p. 148. 

95 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 




Figure 22 



artist paints the pond rectangular in shape, 
lined in with yellow sandstone, just as if he 
were drawing a diagram or plan, or work- 
ing drawing of it. On the side of the pond 
towards the observer there stand three palm 
trees; on the opposite side only two. Con- 
sequently, three of them are drawn in front 
of the diagram, the other two behind it, as 
it were. As the trees are of about equal 
height in nature, they are drawn equally 
high. 

In the experiment, the pupils of all classes 
were requested to draw a pond with trees in 
front and on the opposite side; the rectan- 

96 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

gular form was mentioned only to the pri- 
mary and grammar classes. No child drew 
the picture exactly in the Egyptian style. 
Five groups could be distinguished. The 
most immature method showed a radial ar- 
rangement of the trees {Fig. 23) . This meth- 




Figure 23 

od was characteristic of 43 per cent, of the 
kindergarten pupils; some pupils were found 
in every class up to 12 years of age who 
had not advanced beyond this primitive, or 
rudimentary, form of representation. The 
same method is recognized in the Egyptian 
picture of the brickmakers' pond, in Fig. 28. 
It is parallel to the one employed in Fig. 24, 

97 



Artistic Culture Epochs 




^ffff 



Figure 28 
representing a Shaman's Lodge (Alaska) ; 
the figures, arranged radially along the four 
sides, are meant to designate people seated 
around the walls of the Lodge.* In the 
second and third groups, the pond was 
drawn strictly rectangular, as in the Egyp- 
tian drawing. About 50 per cent, of all 
drawings were of this class. Group II had 
the trees arranged in various symbolical 
ways of which Fig. 25 is a fair example. 
With this may be compared Fig. 26, a sym- 
bol taken from an Ojibwa Chant, meaning 
"It is growing, the tree". The symbol rep- 
resents "Mide wigan (the Medicine Lodge) 
with trees growing around it at the four cor- 



ners. 



»* 



♦Taken from the Annual Report of the Bureau of 
Ethnology, 1888-89. P- 507- 
♦Report of Bur. of Ethn., 1888-89, P- 245. 

99 




Trees i and 3 are meant to stand on the 
opposite side; 2 and 4, on the near side 




Figures 25 {upper), 26 {lower) 
100 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

Group in is represented by Fig. 27 where 
the trees are drawn in natural position. An- 
other group shows the rectangle of the pond 
drawn more or less in perspective; and the 
fifth, represented only by the maturest chil- 
dren of the highest classes, drew a perfect 
landscape. 

Another set of drawings was based upon 
Figs. 28 and 29. Fig. 28 shows Egyptian 
prisoners of war making bricks;* the bricks 




Figure 29 



are arranged in rows on the ground, and 
not in piles as it may seem. The five groups 
in Fig. 29, Coffin-makers,* tho drawn one 
above the other, each on a separate base, 



*Oppel, loc. cit, p. 144. 
*Oppel, loc. cit., p. 143. 



IOI 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

must be considered as being really on the 
same plane, so that, e. g., the glue pot is 
on the left of the resting man, and the two 
vases are standing behind the coffin, and 
would have been partly hidden from view 
had the artist drawn the picture in perspec- 
tive. The two pictures illustrate the prin- 
ciple in Egyptian drawing that objects 
whose real position is behind one another, 
are drawn above one another; whatever the 
artist knows is there and is exposed to view 
according to this principle. 

In the experiment at the "Ethical Culture 
School", the pupils were invited to draw a 
picture, representing a shoemaker on this 
side of a road, working in the open air, and 
a carpenter at work on the opposite side. 
Fig. 30 is a specimen of the manner in which 
a majority of the children solved the prob- 
lem. It requires no comment. 

In order to prove, by way of parenthesis, 
that we are here dealing with actual develop- 
mental periods in the life of the individual 
child, the following three sketches are 
presented (Figs. 31, a, b, and c). All three 
are the work of the same individual who is 
now a well-known landscape painter of orig- 
inal powers. Fig. 31a exhibits his response 
102 



Artistic Culture Epochs 








Figure 30 

to the problem described, when he was a 
boy of 13 in the Fifth Grade of the Ethical 
Culture School. The interesting still-life 
(Fig. 31b) was sketched by him in water 
color when he graduated from the school, at 
the age of 16 or 17. Fig. 31c is a five-min- 
ute sketch of the author of this volume, 
drawn by the same artist a few years ago. 
The progress in conception and perspective 
103 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

is most instructive. It must be remembered 
that the man's power is now in landscape 
painting. 

It may be added that the statuettes made 
by the younger and the less artistic children 
(cf. Figs. 3-7) remind one very strongly of 
Assyrian statuettes of which there may be 
found a large and instructive collection at 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New 
York. 

The parallelism between the work of chil- 
dren and that of savages and ancients, as 
demonstrated by the experiments of which 
there has been here given a brief account, is 
certainly very striking. It can be observed 
that the same biological laws that deter- 
mined the working of the human mind in the 
race, are still at work in the evolution of the 
child-soul from infancy up to adult age, and 
shape the children's artistic expression. All 
children pass thru a sequence of epochs altho 
perhaps not everyone thru all, or not all thru 
the different periods in exactly the same way. 
The difference is determined by different sets 
of hereditary and environmental influences. 
Some may, in this form of expression, never 
develop beyond the savage stage, tho 
representing modern culture in other forms 
104 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

of expression. With others, it may be just 
the other way. But we learn from this at 
least that we must take children on their 
own terms, and judge their work from the 
standpoint of psychological evolution. Al- 
so, that art instruction can well be correlated 
with history, and that the teaching of his- 
tory, which is a record of these culture 
epochs in the development of the race and 
of individual nations, might perhaps be so 
adjusted that these epochs be represented in 
an order which would coincide with the cor- 
responding stages in the child's mental ad- 
vancement. This, of course, is a topic by it- 
self. It has been demonstrated, however, 
that children will take great interest in the 
creations of savage art; and that they will, 
with genuine enthusiasm, work in ancient or 
primitive fashion. 

This work may consist in direct reproduc- 
tions of primitive creations; and in inven- 
tive and imaginative models and drawings 
of new themes, after studying samples of 
primitive art treating of parallel subjects 
or intended for similar purposes. Especial- 
ly in modeling and designing, children will 
imitate savage and ancient patterns, or work 



105 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

inventively in primitive style, with surpris- 
ingly good results. Teachers are aware of 
the ease with which children reproduce In- 
dian pottery. Model 5 in Fig. 38 is the re- 
production from memory of a Grecian capi- 
tal; the upper model in Fig. 32 represents 
the Finding of the Child Moses, modeled af- 
ter studying Assyrian bas-reliefs; the mid- 
dle figure on the same plate is a frieze for 
a temple of Ceres, composed by a child af- 
ter studying Greek models; and Figs. 33- 
35 are colored drawings of an Indian vase 
from the object, with original decorations 
designed in savage fashion. 

Showing them samples of primitive art 
has also this advantage that the children, 
seeing art work to whose standard they can 
attain, will take courage to apply them- 
selves, while the holding up of modern 
standards may sometimes produce a very 
disheartening effect upon youthful students. 
Indeed, it requires much discretion to create 
the proper environment for young children; 
and tho I am heartily in sympathy with 
those who desire to introduce reproductions 
of the masterpieces of art into every school- 
room, I feel that in the selection of typical 
representations, samples of primitive art 
106 



Artistic Culture Epochs 

must not be omitted. And we would do a 
great injustice to primitive artists if we 
would suppose their work to be altogether 
crude. It is, in many respects, very crude 
indeed; but there are, especially in decora- 
tive effects, pieces of exquisite beauty among 
the productions of savage art. 

We should be deceived if we would ex- 
pect a daily, steady and regular progress in 
the child. The development of a child is 
in outward appearance a fitful process: 
there are periods of rapid improvement al- 
ternating with times of indolence and even 
of seemingly retrogade movement. We 
need not worry over this phenomenon. A 
child does not grow in concentric spheres; 
but his vital forces swell now in this, now in 
another direction. Like the oak whose 
branches spread to all points of the com- 
pass, in irregular order, and which during 
the winter only seems to sleep while the 
forces within are preparing for a new bud- 
ding time: so the child has his seasons.* 



•Cf. p. 81, No. 3- 



107 



VI 



Suggestions as to a Course in Art Training 

If I were to suggest a series of exercises 
in art expression, I should recommend first 
of all, conceptional work. By this I mean 
representations from memory such as the 
children are most interested in. All of their 
spontaneous work is conceptional, that is 
they represent from memory things, or 
scenes, they have seen and witnessed. This 
work can be made very interesting and help- 
ful, in that it will encourage the children to 
observe more carefully. It will also open 
up to the teacher a new avenue for studying 
the child— what the child likes best, what he 
observes most closely, under what conditions 
he lives, what he remembers most readily, 
etc. 

Another group of work is also concep- 
tional, but with this difference, that the ob- 
ject to be represented will be placed before 
the children. This is what is commonly call- 
ed objective work. But the child does not 
really work from the object as this is usually 
understood; he does not produce a copy of 
the object, more or less perfect in propor- 
tion to his greater or lesser skill. None of 
108 



Suggestions as to a Course in Art Training 

us draw from the object, or draw the object 
itself. That is an elliptical way of putting 
it. We draw what we see (and all of us see 
with different eyes), and as we see it, that 
is, as the object impresses us. In other 
words, we draw from our mind, we draw 
the mental image of an object. The pres- 
ence of the object, while we reproduce it 
artistically, will intensify the mental image; 
it will re-enforce our concept. But tho 
between every looking up at the object and 
every looking down at our paper or lump 
of clay there may pass only a moment of 
time, our work itself is no less from memory 
than when the object is not present at all. 
This is the reason why individual differ- 
ences assert themselves so plainly in the 
drawings or models of a class of children 
working from the same object. In each 
one's mind, there is a different image of the 
form from which they work. Hence this 
method also deserves the name concep- 
tional. A good way of procedure is to con- 
nect the work with an observation lesson, 
and sometimes to remove the object of study 
before the children begin to draw or model 
it. 

Another exercise is imaginative work 
109 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

which is practically artistic composition: 
the putting together of conceptional ele- 
ments into a new combination to form a new 
whole. Illustrative work belongs here, il- 
lustrations of stories, events in history and 
the like. Children have a very lively imagi- 
nation, and if given scope they will surprise 
us by their ingenious compositions. The 
Moses bas-relief in Fig 32 is a sample. 
Fig 36 is an imaginative drawing, "Priam's 
visit to the Tent of Achilles", by an eight 
year old. Fig. 37 is a winter scene com- 
posed by a little French girl whose nationality 
is plainly discernible in her drawing. 

The fourth and last exercise is decorative 
work — designs of all kinds, in pencil and 
color, in carving and weaving, in bas-relief 
and sculptural ornament. This work, too, 
calls for a great amount of invention, and 
children will take great pride in it, as is seen 
as low down as in the Kindergarten, if they 
are given the proper incentive. In other 
words, there must be the stimulus of a genu- 
ine interest in the object of decoration. The 
work must not be aimless, but always to a 
certain purpose; that means we must give 
the children some special thing in which they 
have an interest, some surface, to decorate, 
no 




7 8 9 10 

Figure j8. CLiy Modeling 




Figure 2~J '. A Pond with Trees 




^ 







Si 




Figure 32. Clay Modeling 



. IF 




? * *^'' v/^' / 7 




( '.- 



Figures JJ, jj, Jj. Colored Drawings of an 
Indian Vase 







S 
Si 



Suggestions as to a Course in Art Training 

Abstract designs call forth very little en- 
thusiasm. But let them plan a design, and 
execute it, by carving or painting, to beau- 
tify a vase, or a workbox, or a baseball bat; 
or design a cover for a book they have read, 
or for a series of essays they have them- 
selves written; or urge them to look 
around for any objects of common use 
which, by decoration, they may transform 
into a thing of beauty: and the children will 
at once become interested and exhibit an ar- 
dor and zeal, and a fertility of invention 
which it is a genuine pleasure to behold. The 
decorative effect of the candlesticks (models 
3 and 4 in Fig. 38) and inkwells (models 
6-10 on same plate) is certainly striking. The 
fish design in Fig. 32, invented by a girl of 
fourteen, is also very interesting. 

Much ornamental art consists of the repe- 
tition of simple figures. It has been shown* 
that this phenomenon is connected with a 
peculiar tendency of the mind to count and 
group objects automatically by resolving 
large numbers into small groups of equal or 
similar characteristics. This tendency has 
much to do with the sense of rhythm which, 



*"Some Mental Automatisms", by E. H. Lindley and 
G. E. Partridge, Pedagogical Seminary V, 1. 
Ill 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

in turn, is closely in accord with the circula- 
tory and respiratory rhythm. The idea of 
"symmetry enters largely into the products 
of animal activity, e. g., the symmetrical 
structures of ants and spiders, the circular 
nests of fish and birds." This biological 
condition is probably the source from which 
our love of symmetry springs, and indicates 
"the origin not only of all conventionalisms 
in art, but also of the impulse which led to 
an interest in geometrical science." I have 
quoted the results of these interesting inves- 
tigations because they corroborate my previ- 
ous contention that there are biological 
causes for many of the mental activities with 
which we are here dealing, and that we must 
appreciate children's work in the light of 
manifestations of growth. 

As to the form of execution, drawing is 
evidently that form of artistic activity which, 
tho practiced earliest, owing to the easy ac- 
cessibility of paper and pencil, presents the 
greatest difficulties to young children, as it 
requires the greatest degree of artistic ab- 
straction—representing, as it does, the three- 
dimensional space on a two-dimensional sur- 
face; and it is apt to tempt children into 
scribbling, that is the making of aimless 
112 



Suggestions as to a Course in Art Training 

lines. The experiments reported in this 
book seem to show that modeling offers the 
easiest and most natural beginning of art ex- 
pression. It deals with three-dimensional 
masses, and allows of a more realistic repre- 
sentation. Clay permits energetic handling 
and is yet soft enough to offer the least pos- 
sible resistance to the feeble fingers of the 
youngest pupil. It appeals to the sense of 
touch and produces tactile sensations of 
smoothness which have so much to do with 
the development of esthetic emotions. It 
strengthens the judgment of form, and calls 
forth that motor activity thru which the 
mind acquires so many of its most precious 
concepts. It is so easy to handle that even 
tender tots can make wonderful things, and 
yet it permits of the highest perfection and 
mastership. 

Leaving out, in this connection, such oc- 
cupations as weaving (in paper, ribbon, and 
thread), carving, needle-work and the like 
which connect art work proper with manual 
training, as these exercises have been re- 
ferred to in the first part of this book, 
I would suggest as the next step, paper 
cutting. While here, the three-dimensional 
space is reduced to a two-dimensional 

"3 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

symbol, it still deals with tangible ob- 
jects which are much more realistic than 
the mere picture. Children will often play 
with paper dolls as gladly as they do with 
the creatures of sawdust and porcelain, and 
will dress them, and put them to bed with 
almost equal delight. And then, it deals 
with outlines, with the silhouettes of objects, 
with their shadow-pictures. Shadow-pic- 
tures arouse the children's intensest interest, 
as we all know; and it has been shown in 
more than one way that children are most 
concerned in outlines. Of course, drawing 
may also be in outline; but paper cutting, 
or tearing, has this advantage that it is 
more direct and prevents scribbling. It also 
strengthens the child's judgment as every 
cut of the scissors tells. 

Last of all come painting and drawing — 
with brush and water colors, colored cray- 
ons, pencil and what not, at the discretion of 
the teacher who will adapt himself to the 
varying needs of the different ages and in- 
dividuals. It is not intended to imply that 
there should be at first only modeling, then 
freehand cutting, and last drawing. Rather 
will the three forms of expression go hand 
in hand. But the work should be so directed 
as to produce in the child's mind a true con- 
114 



Suggestions as to a Course in Art Training 

ception of the world around him, and to 
strengthen his power of self-expression. In 
particular, it may be said that in any special 
series of exercises the sequence should be first 
modeling, then cutting, then painting, and 
finally drawing. But do not tie the children 
down to minute representations, to a scale 
which requires great exactness and fine work. 
Grant them ample space, the blackboard, 
large sheets of paper, large crayons; encour- 
age bold lines, bold strokes ; the character and 
swing of the whole rather than a painstaking 
recording of details. 

Alongside with exercises in expression, 
there should go a study of great models, of 
the masterpieces of art, of painting and 
sculpture. This should be done not so much 
for the purpose of searching into the details 
of their technique (tho it is well to study 
the master touch, and to learn from the 
manner in which great minds have expressed 
themselves) as to derive inspiration. Art 
is a record of the development of our con- 
ception of the beautiful — a record of the 
great thought development of the race. For 
in their art, the succeeding generations em- 
bodied their ideals. The history of art is the 
history of ideals. 

115 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 
Conclusion 

In closing, my plea is once more for free- 
dom and individuality. It is not for so-call- 
ed results, that is showy products, for which 
we must strive, but we must make this work 
an instrument to develop the child-soul in its 
integrity and fulness. The perfection of 
the child must be the aim, not a finished piece 
of work that will arouse the enthusiasm of 
an unpedagogical multitude. If we would 
once begin to understand that the real pro- 
duct of education cannot be exhibited and 
made a show of, but that it will reveal itself 
in the life and character of the child when 
he has reached maturity: we shall learn to 
apply the right measure to school instruc- 
tion, and in particular to elementary art 
work. This must be so conducted that it 
may reveal the best and the noblest of which 
the child's soul is capable, that it may be- 
come a stimulus and inspiration for a genu- 
ine striving for the ideal. But unless the 
child is given latitude to be himself, to ex- 
press himself, and unless his ideas and their 
expression are judged from a child's stand- 
point, however crude that may be; or if the 
child's natural instincts are repressed to 
116 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

make way for artificial methods and con- 
ventional systems : art, as well as any other 
branch that deals with emotions and ideals, 
will become a demoralizing element, tempt- 
ing the child into mere outward conformity, 
affectation and cant. Art, to be a moral in- 
fluence, must also make for truth; it must 
lead forth from the deep recesses of our 
heart a revelation of our most individual 
feelings; it must be an expression of all that 
is dear to our mind, and sacred, and noble, 
and exalted. Art must serve to establish the 
right relation between our inner self and our 
outer self, between what we are and what we 
seem. The right kind of art work will awak- 
en in our children that love of harmony and 
order, that enthusiasm for genuineness and 
sincerity, that respect for the rights and 
characters of others, as well as for their 
own true nature which struggles for exist- 
ence and expression; in short, that spiritual 
attitude which alone will render their lives 
a revelation of goodness, a blessing to the 
world they live in, a factor in divine regen- 
eration. The truth alone will make us free. 
Polonius' oft quoted words find a ready ap- 
plication to all forms of self-expression, but 
notably to that of manifestation thru art ; 
117 



Some Fundamental Verities in Education 

"To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 



118 



DEC 11 I 911 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
DEC 1* w 



